


Shadow & Light

by paintedrecs



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Alive Belmonts, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alucard known primarily as Adrian, Anal Sex, Artist!Trevor, Barista!Trevor, Bickering, Blow Jobs, Bottom!Adrian, Canonical Character Death (Lisa Tepes), Dark Humor, Family Dynamics, Fluff and Angst, Grief, Insomnia, M/M, Musician!Adrian, Questionable Alcohol Decisions, Scars (literal and emotional), Shower Sex, They're both initially kind of dicks but they have their reasons, Trevor & Sypha friendship, Trevor pov, discussion of trauma, lots of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:54:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23233567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: “So you’re a night owl,” Trevor said, somewhere in his second week making drinks for Adrian. He set the latte in front of him and squeezed into the chair on the other side of Adrian’s usual table. “Student? Grad student? Surprisingly young professor?”“You’re full of questions tonight,” Adrian said. He drew the ceramic bowl closer, wrapping his pale hands around it; Trevor ignored his soft sigh, the way his eyelashes fluttered at the warmth soaking into his palms.***When a golden-haired stranger walked into his coffee shop late one night, Trevor thought three things: he was beautiful, he had a shitty attitude, and it was a fucking terrible time for Sypha to go on her break and leave all the work to him.Two weeks later, Trevor's view had shifted: Adrian was still irritatingly beautiful...and someone he had a hell of a lot of fun talking to.And two weeks after that? Well. No one could ever accuse Trevor of making good decisions.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont
Comments: 104
Kudos: 464





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> About 70 fics into the Trevor/Alucard tag (which sadly only has ~200 fics total, WHY is this a rare pair??), I kept wishing for more AUs. On my way to work one morning, I grumpily thought, "Why don't they have coffee shop AUs? They deserve something that fandom-basic and fluffy." So I started writing one. And, since it's me, it got a lil more complicated and longer than I meant it to be, but...the core idea's the same. Trevor and Alucard deserve happiness, and they deserve it with each other.
> 
> For anyone who's terribly attached to the Belmont family: apologies for the liberties I've taken! I wanted to explore some different reasons for Trevor's isolation, and what it might look like for a 20-something to be finding his own way in a world that's determined to hook him into a path he might not want to follow. Families are complicated, and detaching yourself from your legacy isn't always so black & white. At least Adrian Ţepeş can understand some of that.
> 
> Also, I gave Adrian glasses because I could.

Trevor Belmont was a disappointment to his family.

He could see it now, the words they’d etch onto his gravestone if he stepped into the street and got hit by a car tomorrow. His mother would stand by his slowly-lowered casket, watching it with tears in her eyes—not because of his untimely death, but because of the sheer waste of effort in raising him, only to shell out a grand for a funeral.

At least, he figured it must cost an absurd amount. And, Trevor mused sourly, they probably wouldn’t even hassle with a half-assed memorialization. They’d just cremate him, wipe his name from the family records, and save the effort of a ceremony or permanent resting place; that way, no one would ever have to bother visiting him. Or at least _pretending_ that they had any interest in bringing him flowers and “showing respect” or shit like that, like they did on a goddamn monthly basis with Trevor’s bastard of a grandfather.

Leon Belmont, who was _not_ a disappointment to the family legacy, but who was the biggest fucking asshole Trevor could’ve ever had the misfortune of being related to. His “celebration of a life-well-lived,” as they’d called it, had probably cost a small fortune. _Two_ grand, maybe.

“Sypha,” Trevor called, down the counter. “Hey Sypha, how much does it cost to get buried?”

Sypha, who was busy filling the coffee orders he was supposed to be taking, ignored him.

“Ten thousand dollars would be a safe starting point—assuming you put sufficient thought into your burial plot and choice of casket,” a quiet, pleasantly masculine voice said.

Trevor blinked and swung back to his neglected register, where he hadn’t noticed a customer approach. A customer who, incidentally, was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen in his life.

“Huh,” Trevor said. “Shit, that’s more than I expected.”

The man tilted his head, his long blond hair sliding like water over his broad shoulders—a mesmerizing flow that it was difficult to look away from. “Do you mind if I order?” he asked, in a crisply polite tone that Trevor could tell was masking annoyance. It wasn’t that Trevor was particularly perceptive; the man was impatiently tapping his fingers—long, elegant, studded with rings that could probably cover the cost of ten funerals—against the countertop. “Unless you’re planning to drop dead in the next five minutes, in which case I’d prefer to take my business elsewhere.”

Ah, fuck that, Trevor thought, his attraction instantly evaporating. This guy—so pale and overdressed he looked like he either _sold_ $10,000 coffins or had popped right out of one himself—was a pretentious dickwad. Which, really, shouldn’t have come as a surprise, considering how fucking gorgeous he was. Not a single goddamn hair out of place, bone structure so perfect it physically hurt to look at: he must be used to people fawning all over him at the slightest bat of his golden eyelashes.

And of course his order was as irritating as his face.

“One latte, coming right up, your highness,” Trevor said with a light bow before stabbing his finger against the touchscreen to input the order.

“ _Decaf_ latte,” the man insisted, with sneering emphasis that showed exactly how much he trusted Trevor’s ability to convey that obscure detail to Sypha.

“Two and a half pumps of caramel in your double-shot _decaf_ latte, almond milk, with a _dash_ of cinnamon—mixed in, not sprinkled on the top—heated to exactly 160 degrees,” Trevor recited back, just to be a dick. “That’ll be ten bucks, even.”

One delicate blond eyebrow lifted. The man glanced at the board behind Trevor’s head, opened his mouth slightly as though to protest the markup—Trevor caught a glimpse of almost blindingly white teeth, unstained by his coffee habits—then shook his head and silently handed over his credit card.

“It’s the after hours fee,” Trevor explained, his ire prickling again at the sight of the _Platinum Membership_ emblazoned across its sleek black surface. Why did rich people always have to _flaunt_ their fucking wealth? He got the point: he was the poor sod working his way through college on three scholarships, a bucketload of loans, and a shitty job, while this guy...was he even a student? He probably could’ve just bought himself a degree and called it done. Leave some classroom space for the rest of them.

“You’re open all night,” the man pointed out, leaning a slim hip against the counter with effortless grace.

Fuck, he was good looking, Trevor thought again, unwillingly. Tall—he probably had an inch or two on Trevor, who was by no means _short_ —with a trim waist and long legs. He was wearing a long coat open over a simple white t-shirt and tightly-fitting black leather pants, and Trevor couldn’t seem to keep his eyes from drifting lower, trying to determine if the...

“ _Shit_ ,” he swore when Sypha clapped him on the back of his head.

“I’m taking my break,” she announced. “Be nice, Trevor, and stop taking twenty minutes to ring up one customer.”

“It’s not like there’s a line,” he muttered, but finished punching in the correct details and shoving the card into the reader, with a pointed raise of his own, less perfectly shaped eyebrows to convey that this was something customers were supposed to do themselves.

“I presume you can be trusted to make my drink,” the dickwipe said— _Adrian Fahrenheit Ţepeş_ , according to his card, a name as pretentiously pretty as his face. “Or should I anticipate waiting until your manager returns?”

“What makes you think Sypha’s my manager?” Trevor said argumentatively.

Adrian took his card back, careful to keep their fingers from touching. “Isn’t she?”

His tone was mild, free of any particular concern about the matter, but there was the slightest smirk at the edge of his pretty mouth that told Trevor he was doing it intentionally. Nevermind that Trevor _was_ a low-level employee at Symphonic Beans, a position he’d resentfully taken when his parents abruptly withdrew the last vestiges of their financial support, well over a year before graduation.

Goddamn dicks, the lot of them, and his mother the worst of all. She’d called him right before this evening’s shift to coolly remind him that he no longer had access to the family credit cards and that she had taken the liberty of cancelling the one in his name. Which, despite her blasted accusations, he’d used—for the first time in _months_ —to buy much-needed groceries, along with one measly $8 pack of beer that wasn’t going to break anyone’s bank, least of all his parents’.

_Rich people_ , Trevor thought again, hating both the man in front of him and his own blood.

There was a reason he was in a foul mood that night, and ready to pick a fight at the slightest provocation.

He glowered, considering how much to bite back and how angry Sypha would be if he pissed off yet another customer.

“I can make your goddamn coffee,” he gritted out, unwillingly, and as politely as he could manage. “Do you want it in a to-go cup, or are you staying?”

Adrian didn’t respond immediately. He flicked his gaze around the mostly empty tables, seeming to hesitate over his decision. It was close to 2 AM on a Friday—Saturday now? Trevor was fast losing track of his days—which meant most of the students who frequented the place during finals were either sleeping off the week or out partying. Trevor wondered, briefly, why Adrian was doing neither, then firmly decided he didn’t care.

“To go,” Adrian said finally, when a haggard-looking freshman stumbled through the door behind him, reeking of alcohol and week-old socks. “And if you’re taking his order before filling mine, please have the decency to wash your hands.”

Trevor muttered to himself while steaming Adrian’s almond milk, then tapped the pitcher against the countertop harder than necessary while checking it’d reached the right consistency. No bubbles, with a silky texture that it’d taken him months to perfect. The trick, then, was to pour in a slow, consistent motion, creating either a traditional latte-leaf shape, or the musical note that Sypha preferred.

The leaf was easier, and Trevor was feeling lazy; besides, a fresh batch of frat bros were milling around the register, looking suspiciously handsy with the tip jar. One of them—probably a rugby player, well under six feet and insecure about it, with a stocky build, a buzzcut, and an ugly grin—swaggered to the table where Adrian was waiting. Adrian’s chin was resting in one hand, his unfocused gaze angled somewhere past Trevor, probably to the piano set in the corner of the room. He looked like a marble statue that Rugby Dick was set on drunkenly defiling.

Trevor’s hand slipped in his distraction; he spilled a few drops of milk on the wrist that was holding the cup, hissed out a series of choice curses, then looked down at the badly mangled, dick-shaped art he’d somehow managed to produce. It was a little too ridged, still, to reflect any human dick _he’d_ ever seen, but the shape was hard to miss.

Fuck it, he thought, immediately discarding the idea of starting over. “Latte for the decaf princess,” he called, grinning when Adrian’s head turned in his direction, his eyes narrowing. Adrian rose to his feet—smoothly, sweeping his coat behind him like he was on a goddamn catwalk—and neatly sidestepped the rugby bro who was still slurring his way through his first demeaningly explicit pickup line.

“This isn’t the temperature I asked for,” Adrian said as soon as he touched the side of the cup.

“Because you can’t heat almond milk to 160 and expect it to be anything drinkable,” Trevor said. “I know you look down your pretty nose at guys like me, who actually work for a goddamn living, but I _do_ work here, which means I know what I’m doing. If anyone’s actually been giving you milk that hot, they’re probably just fucking you over with actual dairy.”

Adrian was watching him, quietly, his eyes tracing over Trevor’s face. “I’ve had...unpleasant reactions the last few times,” he said, less an admission than a simple statement of fact. “I’d thought perhaps it was something I’d eaten.”

“Carmilla’s Café?” When Adrian nodded, Trevor snorted. “She thinks she’s god’s gift to the coffee world. She’ll make whatever she damn well pleases, and to hell with what you actually order.”

“And you wouldn’t,” Adrian said.

“I might be a dick, but I’m not the kind who’d fuck with someone’s life for my own pride,” Trevor said. “Plus I don’t really give a shit about coffee. Order what you want; I get paid regardless.”

“Hm,” Adrian replied, seeming content to leave it there. He lifted his cup with an indecipherable expression. “Speaking of dicks, I don’t believe I saw this particular one on the menu.”

“It’s...a leaf,” Trevor attempted, wondering if Sypha _would_ fire him if he racked up enough customer complaints. As much as he despised his work, he did actually need the money, especially now. “Or some kind of flower. Take your pick.”

“It’s my choice, is it?” Adrian asked. He dipped the tip of his tongue, lightly, into the slit at the rounded top of the penis-blossom, his golden-brown gaze lifted to Trevor’s.

Trevor swallowed, unable for once to think of a fitting comeback.

“It’s passable,” Adrian said, licking the foam delicately off his lips. “Thank you, Trevor.”

Trevor watched him leave, feeling like he’d been knocked quite efficiently off his feet. 

“Oh for the love of all that’s holy,” Sypha sighed, from far too close.

Trevor jumped. “Uh,” he said. “I was just...”

“I could _see_ what you were doing. While I’m glad you’re finally interested in something other than your own gloomy brooding, we _do_ have customers to attend to.”

The rejected rugby player had managed to drape himself halfway over the counter, Trevor noted, with the tip jar knocked on its side and spilling coins across the floor.

“For fuck’s—” he said when he saw one of the other drunken dimwits stooping down to pocket a handful of quarters. “Sypha, that sad sop by the window—there’s a stench, you’ll find him easily enough—ordered a mocha and a danish. Mind taking care of it while I sort this out?”

“A thirty minute break and you made all of one drink,” Sypha said. “Sometimes I wonder why I even pay you, Trevor.”

“Because I’m your best friend and you love me,” Trevor said, knowing it to be more or less true. He and Sypha had been friends for half their lives, to his family’s great annoyance and his far more substantial relief. It didn’t matter that she was also pretty much his _only_ friend. A job, an education, and someone who let you puke out her truck window after a night of spectacularly bad decisions: what else did a man need, really.

He set out to either kick the rugby team’s collective asses out of the building or take their money—or, preferably, both—not sparing another thought for Adrian Fucking 160 Degrees Fahrenheit _._

***

“So you’re a night owl,” Trevor said, somewhere in his second week making drinks for Adrian. He set the latte in front of him and squeezed into the chair on the other side of Adrian’s usual table. “Student? Grad student? Surprisingly young professor?”

“You’re full of questions tonight,” Adrian said. He drew the ceramic bowl closer, wrapping his pale hands around it; Trevor ignored his soft sigh, the way his eyelashes fluttered at the warmth soaking into his palms.

“I’m bored,” Trevor said. “It’s Sunday, and it’s winter break, which means the only people sorry enough to still be hanging around this shithole are the ones who have to—that’d be me—and the ones who have nowhere else to go. I’m wondering how you fit into that. Professor, huh? Up late grading papers, cursing all the shitheads who ran off to warmer climates and left you to stew alone.”

“Student,” Adrian said, the corners of his mouth ticking up a bit at the latte art—a hand with its middle finger extended, one Trevor was particularly proud of. He’d even managed to shade in the blunted lines of a fingernail. “As are you, I expect. Unless this is your chosen career.”

Trevor, oddly, didn’t bristle at the dig; Adrian didn’t sound like he’d meant it judgmentally. He watched as Adrian drank, in slow, leisurely sips, as though savoring each drop. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing, Trevor thought, to build a career out of something that brought such enjoyment.

He shook himself and sat back in his chair, grinning when Adrian wrinkled his nose at his wide-limbed sprawl. “But why decaf,” he asked. Adrian always arrived between the hours of midnight and 2 AM, perfectly primped and polished, in stark contrast to Trevor’s usually bleary-eyed exhaustion. “If you’re pulling regular all-nighters, how does this even help?”

Adrian set his bowl down and brushed absently at the lock of hair that always fell over his forehead in a soft curl. Trevor absolutely never, under any circumstances, had the desire to touch it himself.

“Not that it’s your business,” Adrian said, “but I have trouble sleeping. If I drink caffeine after nightfall, I get...jittery, I suppose you’d say. Anxious.”

“Look, I’m not trying to drive away one of our regular customers,” Trevor said, glancing at Sypha—who’d grown accustomed to him announcing his break whenever Adrian walked in. “But if sleeping’s that much of an issue, you might do better with herbal tea or shit like that. And staying home instead of wandering around like some creature of the night.”

Adrian lifted an eyebrow.

“Your clothes,” Trevor said, gesturing at them. It’d taken a full week for Adrian to relax enough to remove his coat—long, black, with a flared hem, a striking gold collar and trim, and elaborate buckles that seemed purely decorative. It was something the goths at Trevor’s high school would’ve called _a statement piece_ , although the material was clearly a lot higher quality than the crap they wore.

To Trevor’s deep discomfort, what Adrian wore underneath was worse when fully revealed. A soft-looking, loose-fitting white shirt that plunged in a deep v, baring his collarbones and an oddly appealing stretch of smooth skin and firm pectorals—and black leather belts that were crossed high over his hips, for no apparent functional reason. They certainly weren’t doing anything to hold up his skin-tight pants.

“Is there something wrong with my clothing?” Adrian asked, with a clear warning threading under the words.

“You look like you’ve walked right out of a costume shop,” Trevor replied. Let it never be said that a Belmont didn’t have a spine of steel. “Theater major, right? You’re coming from a production of Hamlet, that’s why you need a late night pick-me-up.”

“Have you ever read a word of Shakespeare in your life,” Adrian said, flatly.

“Ah ha, I’ve got it,” Trevor said, pointing at him in triumph and ignoring the slight on his reading comprehension. “Dracula, right? Theater kids are all over that kind of emo shit, especially here. You’re a bloody vampire. That explains everything: the leather boots, the hair—that’s why it’s always so goddamn perfect, it’s a wig, right—your _teeth_...”

Adrian was ordinarily careful to keep them covered by his lips, but he’d almost smiled at one of Trevor’s jokes two nights earlier, briefly putting his sharp canines on display. They were only a little more pronounced than normal—perhaps the only part of his body, Trevor had assumed at the time, that wasn’t infuriatingly flawless—but this explanation made more sense. They were really too subtle for the theater, but he figured maybe they had to be, in order for Adrian to manage his lines without a lisp. Trevor had tried on the traditional plastic fangs before, for a Halloween party. Uncomfortable, and they got in the way of his alcohol, he’d decided before discarding them. Adrian must’ve found a better-quality, and probably much more expensive, set.

“I’m sorry to hear that you have so many issues with my personal appearance,” Adrian said coldly. “I’m afraid that I can’t help the way that I was born.” He rose to his feet; Trevor jolted up, too, his knee knocking against the table, sending Adrian’s bowl rocking dangerously.

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Trevor asked. “You haven’t finished your drink.”

“I’ve lost my appetite. And I don’t seem to be welcome here any longer,” Adrian replied. He slipped his coat over his shoulders, sweeping his long hair out from under the collar, sending it cascading down his back in a ripple of golden waves.

“What the fuck, of course you are,” Trevor said.

“As for my hair,” Adrian said, fixing Trevor with a dismissive look that stopped him in his tracks, “I simply brush it on occasion. You could stand to do the same.”

Well, Trevor thought as Adrian left, the door shutting firmly behind him. It was possible his friend count wasn’t going up to two just yet.

***

Trevor didn’t mope for the next two weeks, no matter what Sypha claimed.

“You mean he still comes in?” he asked, with more betrayal in his voice than he would’ve liked. “What the fuck, Sypha. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you might have tried to change your shifts, and he’s obviously doing his best to avoid you,” Sypha said. “Would you please finish mopping the floor before you leave; Hector’s tired of cleaning up after you.”

Trevor groaned but did as she said. When he was halfway through the nearly-empty space, he glanced at the clock: six minutes to 3 AM, when he was meant to clock out. According to Sypha, Adrian had arrived at precisely 3:15 for the last two nights...mornings?...in a row. Maybe if Trevor lingered, just a little longer—the counters could use wiping, and there was that sticky patch he could never seem to clear off that booth in the back corner...

“Go home, Trevor Belmont,” Sypha said at 3:02, swiping a damp rag out of his hand and shoving him towards the door.

He went, reluctantly, trudging the three blocks to his tiny studio apartment and barely managing to strip off his coat and shoes before collapsing onto his unmade bed. His sheets were starting to smell a little ripe, he thought, until sleep smacked him over the head, making it a problem for another day and for someone who gave a shit.


	2. Chapter 2

Parties hadn’t really done much for Trevor since his sophomore year. Initially, of course, he’d gone all in on them, figuring it was a major part of the college experience. It was how you made friends, right? You got drunk, and you bonded or some shit, and suddenly you had a household of new brothers who were tied to you by _choice_ —and copious amounts of alcohol—without all the layers of guilt and obligation blood brought with it.

The problem was, people didn’t particularly seem to _like_ Trevor, or maybe he didn’t like them—he wasn’t entirely sure. The end result was the same.

During his third frat party, he’d punched some guy named Chad in the face for talking shit about Sypha. It’d turned into a brawl, with a few broken bones and more bloody noses than Trevor could count, and had resulted in the fraternity being temporarily shut down—a victory—and Trevor being suspended for two weeks—a minor setback that his family made far worse.

He’d endured two weeks of lectures from his mom, disappointed head shaking from his dad, and an agonizingly boring stream of disconnected stories from his grandfather, who’d always liked bragging about his own heroism and who abruptly had a heart attack three days after Trevor went back to school.

His family had never actually said they’d blamed him, but the cold shoulders he’d gotten from the entire Belmont clan at the funeral—sorry, _celebration of life_ —had driven the message home.

 _A disgrace_ , he’d heard one distant aunt sniff, not even bothering to make it a whisper.

 _You’d never know he was a Belmont_ , another had replied.

Trevor had gotten horrifically drunk at his next party, made out with two or three strangers—at least, he guessed as much from the lipstick stains and the fact that his dick hurt and he seemed to be missing his underwear the next morning—and passed out in some bushes a mile in the wrong direction from his dorm. Sypha used some sort of tracker on his phone to find him and drag him back to her room, where she shoved him into a bathtub and told him to either clean up or sleep it off.

The next five parties were even worse. He never managed to remember anyone’s names, and no one seemed to give a shit about him in the days after.

He went to class, he worked on his projects, he made incredibly shitty art that meant absolutely nothing to anyone, and he managed, somehow, to keep his scholarships so he didn’t have to go crawling back to his parents.

By his second year, he was tired of it. Sypha had given up on trying to pull his head out of his ass, and he was sick of feeling like warmed-over crap every weekend, so he finally just...stopped. Not drinking, not entirely, but he dialed it back, skipping one backyard beer pong tournament, then another, until he realized he’d never actually _wanted_ to go to any of them. So he didn’t.

No one seemed to give a crap about that, either, and his sex life took a massive dive—although really, he wasn’t sure he missed it that much—but his creative side was easier to tap into when he wasn’t trying to scrape himself to the studio with a sour mouth and a pounding headache.

Which was why, when Sypha invited him to her sorority “gathering” that Saturday night, Trevor didn’t even pause while unloading a tray of dishwasher-hot mugs.

“Come on, Trevor,” she said, not taking his unspoken no for an answer. “I know you haven’t sworn off them entirely. And this one's a special event, to start off the new year.”

“But I don’t seek them out,” he said, setting one of the mugs down harder than he’d meant to. Of all people, Sypha should know not to ask. She’d seen him at his absolute worst, and neither of them was eager to revisit it.

“Three hours,” Sypha said. It was less of a bargain than a demand. “Three hours, and I’ll never ask you again.”

“Because by the next time one of your fucking _events_ rolls around, we’ll have both graduated,” Trevor said. “Hopefully, anyway. Why do you need me there so badly? Is your guest list that empty?”

Alpha Sigma Alpha wasn’t the most popular sorority on campus; their reputation was “studious,” which in frat terms translated to “intelligent, out of your league, and probably unwilling to give you the time of day.” Still, most of the girls were hot enough for guys to make the effort. Trevor had watched plenty of them crash and burn—and a few lucky ones succeed, drifting up the mythical stairs with awed expressions they’d wear for days after. The house motto was _aspire, seek, attain_ , and apparently _attaining_ one of the Seeker Sisters’ attention was like the Wallachian holy grail.

Which Trevor saw absolutely no need to be present for.

“Our guest list is the problem,” Sypha said. “We extended an invitation to a few choice circles, but word apparently leaked. We’ve heard that the entire lacrosse and rugby teams are planning to come—”

Trevor made a revolted noise while finishing off the mugs; he slid the empty tray onto the stack under the counter, refusing to acknowledge Sypha’s triumphant smile. She knew she had him now. It wasn’t that he’d had a _vendetta_ against the rugby team since one of them had tried to...well, it didn’t matter. He just didn’t like them, that was all.

“Plus Godbrand and his friends. And you know what happened the last time, at Kappa Delta.”

Trevor did. He also knew that while the Kappas were a bunch of nice girls who hadn’t been able to prevent a group of rowdy assholes from trashing their kitchen and burning down half of the back patio, none of them had Sypha’s fierce right hook or bone-shattering tongue.

He nodded to acknowledge the customer who’d just entered—a dark-haired girl who flushed at the attention, then deflated when he turned back to Sypha. “Can’t you take care of it yourself?”

“Yes, but I’d prefer to keep my hands clean. If any of them complain, especially Godbrand, you know who the administration will blame.”

It didn’t take much imagination: Trevor knew all too well that the sorority sisters would take the brunt of any fallout, rather than the horny cockstains harrassing them. “Fine,” he said. “Although I still think you don’t need me. And I’m not staying past midnight; I’m fucking tired, and I’d like to see the sunrise from the _right_ side of the day for once.”

***

The party was, for its first two hours, as boring and uneventful as Trevor had dreaded. He drank his way through a six-pack, engaging in a little conversation and light flirting at first, but no one held his interest for long. He dropped his last empty can in the kitchen and grabbed another pack—cheap shit he’d brought with him—considering whether to take it outside to sulk in the garden, or whether Sypha would notice if he skipped out early.

He popped the tab on the first can and tipped it back into his mouth, swallowing the now lukewarm beer in deep gulps and wishing he was better at saying no. He could, when it counted—his family being one major case in point—but it was so much easier to go with the flow, regardless of what he actually wanted.

And what he wanted, right about now, was to be home, either in bed or with some sort of mindlessly shitty movie pulled up on his tv so he didn’t have to think about anything. What to do about his final project, for example, which was looming too heavily now. Or, worse, his post-graduation plans, once his little jaunt away from the accepted Belmont trajectory turned into an actual career path, rather than a youthful dalliance with rebellion.

Trevor’s parents would take him back, he thought. Probably. If he groveled enough.

He cracked a second tab, but before he could lift the can to his lips, a quiet voice interrupted him.

“Why am I not surprised to find you here, skulking alone in the shadows.”

Trevor turned, a little unsteadily, and squinted at the bright flash of sunlight that greeted him. No, he realized after a few seconds of sticky-lashed blinking: it was just Adrian. Golden hair like a halo around his exquisitely-carved features, each line more masterful than the last. How did they do it: making marble look like flesh, like something you could touch, could _hold_ , if you only knew how. It was impossible to reach that level. Trevor had tried, had failed, always falling fathoms short of the greats.

Michelangelo, of course. Carpeaux, with his sinewy limbs and agony-clenched toes. Strazza, swathed in liquid, translucent veils.

“Bernini,” Trevor said aloud, thinking of fingers pressed into the softness of a thigh, the curves of a body lifting itself to meet yours—or attempting to tear itself away.

“Adrian,” said the man in front of him, with an odd quirk to his lips that Trevor was able to, after a moment, register as concern. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d forget it that quickly.”

“Adrian Fahrenheit. Cold as ice, a glacier in human form,” Trevor said, tipping his beer towards the long-stemmed, wide-bowled glass Adrian was holding, filled with a rich red liquid. “I’m not drunk; I’m exhausted, and sick of being here. Where the fuck did you get _wine_.”

The golden-haired fiend glanced down at his glass, swirling it in an easy, practiced movement. “I brought it,” he said. “Based on the swill you’re drinking, I presume you did the same.”

“Drinking and skulking,” Trevor said, feeling agreeable. He’d flipped the lights off when he’d entered the kitchen. The rest of the house was over-bright and far too loud; here, by the windows, he could escape for a few minutes—not outside, not fully _away_ , but with the cool touch of moonlight reminding him it was possible. “I thought I’d try it on for a change. See why it appeals to you.”

“Try...? Ah, the shadows,” Adrian said mildly. “Because you’ve decided that’s where I dwell.”

He looked different. Softer, somehow, like Trevor’s memory of him was sharpened by something uncomfortably close to regret. Maybe he _was_ a little drunk, he thought. He reached out, touching Adrian’s sweater—a black turtleneck, slim-fitting, still, but covering all that pale skin. It didn’t seem fair.

“You’re wearing glasses,” Trevor said, stupidly. “Why?”

“I’m nearsighted,” Adrian replied, with a level of patience Trevor was distantly aware he probably didn’t deserve. “I ordinarily wear contacts. Like you, I’m tired tonight; I thought I’d give my eyes a rest.”

Not colored contacts, Trevor noted. Behind the dark frames and clear lenses, Adrian’s eyes were the same almost eerie gold-brown: like molten glass, like you’d burn if they rested on your bare skin for too long.

Trevor was still touching Adrian’s sweater; he hadn’t been shrugged off, somehow. Adrian hadn’t stormed away in irritation. Trevor had always been one to push his luck; he slid his palm, a little clumsily, up the slope of Adrian’s shoulder, to the warm fabric wrapping his throat.

“No coat tonight?” he asked, wondering if Adrian had stopped wearing it—if he’d been that offended by Trevor’s careless words. Trevor never meant half the shit he said. He’d been wanting to tell Adrian that for weeks, but the truth was, he was even worse with apologies. “You look like you’re on your way to a bloody open mic poetry slam at Carmilla’s.”

Adrian’s shoulders shook a little, enough for Trevor to remove his hand and retreat a few steps—but he was laughing, Trevor realized after a moment. Not audibly, or even enough for anyone to notice, unless they were looking closely.

“I’m sorry if this doesn’t fit with your idea of my vampire aesthetic,” Adrian said. “I _do_ own other clothing.”

“Yes,” Trevor said, unable to keep his foot entirely out of his mouth for long. “So you can blend into human society.” With a tilt of his head, he indicated where they were standing—and the whole blasted party, with the hum of cheerful voices in the rooms beyond.

“Of course,” Adrian said, still sounding lightly amused. “Because my preferred weekend activity is to spend my evenings wandering sorority row, searching for drunken college girls to suck dry.”

“Or the other way around,” Trevor pointed out. Even with the Seekers’ reputation of chilly disdain, Adrian wouldn’t have any problem finding someone to fall to their knees to suck _him_ off. In fact, Trevor thought, with an unpleasant sinking feeling in his stomach, that was probably the whole reason he was here. Why else would a man like Adrian come to a party like this?

Adrian took a leisurely sip from his glass, savoring it as he did his coffee. He approached the sink Trevor was leaning against—in long, liquid strides, like his feet were barely touching the ground—and reached around him to retrieve something. A napkin, Trevor thought, from the rustling sound; he didn’t drop his eyes from Adrian’s to check. They didn’t touch, but Adrian came close enough that Trevor could feel his body heat, the hairs on Trevor’s arms standing on end, like they wanted to bridge the meager distance separating them.

Trevor shivered, and Adrian saw.

“I’m quite uninterested in sorority girls,” Adrian said, in a casual, conversational tone, before stepping back—not far, just enough for Trevor’s skin to suddenly feel cold. Adrian let out a soft breath, his eyes shifting to the side before returning to Trevor’s with a firmer sense of resolve. “Or women in general.”

Oh, Trevor thought. That changed things.

He still approached Adrian like an animal he might spook if he moved too quickly, if he was too rough and eager. Adrian was tall, with a strong build, despite the slenderness of his frame, but there was a gracefulness to his every movement that made Trevor feel slow and clumsy, almost brutish in comparison.

“The things I said...” Trevor set his forgotten beer down, wiping his fingers against the side of his leg. There was no condensation from the warmed aluminum, but his palms were sweating. “I say shit without thinking. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

Adrian leaned back against the kitchen island, taking another sip of his wine, quietly waiting.

“I think you’re fucking gorgeous,” Trevor confided, figuring he might as well come right out and say it.

“I know,” Adrian said. When Trevor snorted, he rolled his eyes and clarified, “I know that _you_ find me attractive. You told me as much on our first meeting.”

“The fuck I did,” Trevor said, although it was probably true. He never had possessed the right sorts of filters.

“I don’t find you entirely unappealing, either,” Adrian said. There was a wicked curve to his lips when he added, “Despite the fact that you dress as though you’ve raided the discount bin in a thrift store. Or perhaps a homeless encampment.”

“Fuck you,” Trevor said, and kissed him.

Adrian disposed of his wine at some point, and his glasses—regrettably, Trevor thought distantly, wondering if he’d put them back on if he asked. He shouldn’t have worried about his more aggressive instincts; Adrian kissed like he was hungry for it, like he wanted to bruise Trevor’s mouth with his, laying claim to him. Trevor groaned, and loosened the button on his pants, drawing the zipper down so he could push himself against Adrian’s muscled thigh as Adrian gripped at his ass, pulling him closer, his tongue no longer delicate or soft.

Trevor’s hips jerked, shuddering into an unsteady lack of control. He hadn’t felt this close to release this quickly since...since he’d discovered porn, probably, touching his dick with intent for the first time, feeling it spurt into his palm before he’d even managed to set any sort of rhythm.

“Eager, are we,” Adrian said into the side of Trevor’s throat, where he’d begun pulling Trevor’s heated skin between his teeth—light scrapes, followed by the warm pressure of a tongue that Trevor could already tell he’d be dreaming about.

“Shut up,” Trevor muttered, squeezing his work-roughened hands around Adrian’s waist, feeling the thick beat of his pulse throbbing in his throat, in his cock—fully hard now, straining to be free. He stepped back enough to lift Adrian to the island’s sleek top before surging into him again, swallowing Adrian’s gasp of surprise at how easily Trevor had manhandled him.

“This is disgustingly unsanitary,” Adrian said after a while, although he didn’t loosen the legs he had locked around Trevor’s waist. “You’re in food services. Do you do this often, on surfaces where you prepare meals? I may have to rethink my dining choices.”

“I haven’t had sex in months,” Trevor said, not feeling as ashamed of it as he supposed he should. “Maybe since before I started that fucking job. Shut up and let me kiss you.”

“Your vocabulary decreases in juxtaposition to this, I see,” Adrian said, reaching down to press the heel of his hand against Trevor’s still underwear-clad cock, which was beginning to leak.

Trevor grunted, fighting off the tightening in his belly, not wanting it to end so soon. “Fuck,” he said, suddenly remembering where they were. “We’re still...”

“I locked the door when I came in,” Adrian said, quietly, with another sharp-toothed nip at Trevor’s neck, then earlobe. “I’m not surprised you didn’t notice. You couldn’t take your eyes off me.”

“I haven’t been able to since the day we met,” Trevor said, gruffly honest.

He tore his gaze away for long enough to confirm Adrian’s words: there was light spilling around the edges of the door and through the narrow gap at its base, but it did appear to be tightly shut, with any activity beyond muffled enough for their actions here to stay...as private as he could manage.

“Take these fucking things off,” he said, returning his attention to where it belonged and tugging at Adrian’s painted-on pants. 

“Since you asked so nicely,” Adrian said. He braced his forearms against the countertop and lifted his hips, holding the position so effortlessly it made Trevor’s dick twitch. Adrian probably felt it; he smirked. “Well, get on with it, then.”

Adrian’s cock, like everything else about him, was annoyingly pretty; Trevor suddenly couldn’t think about anything other than getting his mouth around it. The angle was awkward, but they made it work; Adrian kept one hand braced slightly behind him, the other cupping the back of Trevor’s head, fingers tangled in Trevor’s hair.

“Is that really as deep as you can take me?” Adrian asked, sounding disappointed, but not pushing Trevor beyond what he’d been able to manage; his thumb brushed soothingly behind Trevor’s ear, almost tender, unlike his words. “Your feet are quite large, and you fit both of them into your mouth on a regular basis; I’d thought this would be easy in comparison.”

“Will you shut up, you cocksucker,” Trevor said, pulling off Adrian’s dick with a wet pop.

“I believe that’s you, at the moment,” Adrian said placidly. “At least, you appear to be trying.”

To Trevor’s grim satisfaction, Adrian seemed to lose the capacity for language for a while after that; Trevor breathed out through his nose, relaxing his throat, and sank as far down Adrian’s cock as he could, until the tip of his nose nearly touched the golden thatch of hair at its base. He withdrew, then slid back down, then made skillful use of his tongue and both hands—one encircling what he couldn’t quite reach with his mouth, the other fondling Adrian’s balls—until Adrian gasped again, throwing his head back, his blond hair flowing behind him, a cascade of light across the polished counter.

“Trevor,” he said, his fingers tightening against Trevor’s scalp, but still not forcing him down. “I think I’m—”

Trevor hummed around him, not willing to pull off to tell him to let go, that he could take it.

Adrian seemed to understand; he groaned, his eyelashes dark against his flushed cheeks—black, not blond like the rest of his hair, Trevor noticed now, his heart clenching oddly at the realization.

“Trevor,” Adrian said again, his palm sliding down to the base of Trevor’s neck, in another surprisingly gentle caress, before he arched his back harder and spilled into Trevor’s mouth.

“Fuck,” Trevor said raggedly, wiping the back of his hand over his face and moving stiffly to his feet. “That’s hell on the knees.”

“A true romantic,” Adrian said lazily, blinking those long-lashed eyes at him, and almost smiling. “I’m afraid it might take me a moment, but if you don’t mind waiting, I can...oh.”

Trevor shrugged, following Adrian’s gaze to the damp patch at the front of his underwear, the thick bulge softened now. “It’s been a while,” he repeated.

“But your hands were on me,” Adrian said, sounding...pleased, almost. “You came from just my cock in your mouth—from the thought of me.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Trevor said. “My stamina improves with practice.”

“Mm,” Adrian said. “We’ll see, I suppose.”

He slid off the island, pulling his pants up his legs in a smooth movement accompanied by a subtle—yet enticing—shimmy of his slim hips. He retrieved his wine and glasses, settling the frames neatly back on his nose, then bent to pick up a bottle Trevor hadn’t seen him leave on the other side of the island. “Clean yourself off and meet me outside, if you’d like.”

There was an artfully-fanned stack of floral cocktail napkins by the sink; Trevor used a handful of those, tossing them in the trash and calling it good. He found Adrian settled on a bench in the far corner of the garden, under the wide-branched arms of an oak.

“We seem to have different definitions of the word clean,” Adrian said, tipping his wine into his mouth, his eyes flicking judgmentally to the white stains spattered liberally along Trevor’s jeans.

“It’s paint, you dickwad,” Trevor said, aware Adrian was intentionally prodding him. “I was in the studio before Sypha dragged me here.”

“Art student. Hm,” Adrian said.

“Not what you expected?”

Adrian shrugged, lightly, and moved his half-full bottle off the bench so Trevor could sit next to him. “It fits. You’re surprisingly good with your hands. And I don’t mean that in the classless way you’re thinking.”

Trevor grinned. He was feeling loose-limbed and happy, to a degree he hadn’t experienced in longer than he cared to remember.

“And while lattes may not be the height of artistic achievement, you’ve shown remarkable creativity on that front. Although I still object to what you claimed was a portrait of me.”

“Wrong medium,” Trevor said. Latte Adrian _had_ looked rather like a gremlin, but the deeply offended yet somehow amused expression on Real Adrian’s face had been worth it. “I’d do better with paint. Or sculpture, if I had the blasted time.”

“Is that your...medium, you called it? Your specialty?”

“Sculpture? Sadly, no. I haven’t the time or resources...or skill. I stick to oils, mostly.” Trevor reached for Adrian’s wine glass, then, at the outraged arc of Adrian’s eyebrows, grabbed one of his own beers instead. He grumbled, “We were swapping spit five minutes ago, why are you suddenly squeamish about it now?”

“You had my cock in your mouth,” Adrian reminded him, as though Trevor had any intention of ever forgetting. “Pleasant while that may have been, I don’t find the taste of cum to be a palate enhancer.”

Trevor huffed out a laugh. “You’d faint at someone using your toothbrush, wouldn’t you.”

Adrian’s grimace was expressive and predictable. “That’s despicable,” he said. “Don’t tell me you engage in that kind of vile behavior with your partners.”

“I might,” Trevor said honestly. “I don’t know. I don’t exactly date.”

Adrian didn’t say anything for a while, until Trevor had finished half his can and set it aside, no longer feeling the need to chase a buzz. He was content, with his shoulder pressed against Adrian’s, an owl hooting softly in the distance, the music flooding through yellow-bright windows merely heighting his sense of quiet ease with the man beside him.

“Neither do I,” Adrian said finally, after Trevor had nearly forgotten the context.

“Why are you here?” Trevor asked, abruptly. Adrian lifted a brow at him, and Trevor clarified, “Not _here_ , with me, although...I mean at this fucking party. It doesn’t seem like your kind of scene, if you weren’t trying to get laid.”

“And yet I somehow managed,” Adrian said, with an upwards tilt to his lips that made Trevor want to kiss him again. Which probably wouldn’t be allowed now, he reflected with regret, at least not until he brushed his teeth.

Adrian refilled his glass, settling closer against Trevor’s side when he was done, his long hair tickling Trevor’s throat and the bare skin of his right arm, until he shifted his arm to the back of the bench. It was too cold out here, really, to be without a jacket, but if Adrian wasn’t going to complain, Trevor had no intention of commenting.

Adrian set his non-wine-holding hand—only wearing one ring now, a chunky silver thing with what looked like some sort of family crest—on Trevor’s knee. It was a simple, casual gesture that made Trevor’s heart flutter worryingly. “To answer your actual question, Sypha invited me.”

“Huh. I didn’t know you were friends,” Trevor said, with something that felt uncomfortably like jealousy. He’d never been a jealous person, although he’d never had a reason before—no one he’d ever liked enough to feel twinges of unhappiness over the idea of sharing.

“Acquaintances,” Adrian said. “We have some common interests.”

Sypha was a liar, Trevor concluded, not sure why it surprised him. No wonder she hadn’t relented in the face of all his entirely reasonable objections. Maybe he was assuming too much, but... “Did you know I’d be here?”

“Yes,” Adrian said, only a mild tensing in his fingers betraying that he wasn’t as calm as he seemed. “She explained that despite your uncouth manners, you have a genuinely good heart. And I confess that—perhaps despite my own better judgment—I’d enjoyed our conversations. I thought it might be nice to see you again, in a different context.”

“You missed me, admit it, you wanker,” Trevor said, grinning when that made Adrian fix him with a chilly look.

“I can’t fathom why,” he responded, but he still didn’t move away, or push Trevor’s arm off his shoulders, so Trevor considered it a win. “Why are you here, then?” he asked in turn. “I’d wrongly assumed that this would be an area where you held some dubious expertise, but you seemed soaked in misery by the time I arrived. And cheap alcohol.”

“Sypha told me she needed a bodyguard,” Trevor said. “I thought I’d be breaking up at least a couple fights tonight, or maybe starting one. Possibly getting expelled, if things went bad.”

“Instead, you wound up having sex on inappropriate surfaces,” Adrian said. When Trevor merely grunted to acknowledge the strange turn of events, Adrian swept his thumb lightly across the side of his leg. “You’re a good friend. Why would you take that chance, mere months before graduation?”

“I don’t like bullies,” Trevor said. “And Godbrand’s the worst sort. He gets away with shit because of who he is, and I can’t fucking stand that. Word is—word that I’m pretty sure _he_ spreads—he’s related to Chancellor Vlad somehow. A nephew, I think. Bunch of nepotistic dickbags, the lot of them.”

Adrian removed his hand, switching his wine glass to it as though to mask the gesture. “Chancellor Vlad,” he repeated. Oddly, it sounded like a question.

Trevor turned a bit more to face him. “Don’t you call him that? I thought everyone did. Funny thing: he’s actually why I’m here. At Wallachia U, I mean.”

“Oh?” Adrian said, with such a strange expression that it threw Trevor, for a minute.

Trevor rubbed his hand over his face, the earlier exhaustion seeping back in now that his adrenaline had worn off. He hadn’t had enough beer to hamper his thinking, but his reactions were a little slower, maybe. His inhibitions, too; he was more truthful than he meant to be when he explained, “Or really, because of my parents. I’m a Belmont, which I know won’t mean anything to you, but...it’s kind of a big fucking deal in some circles. The ones I’m not interested in, financial mostly. Big business, the kind that gets rich off other people’s hard work—and their suffering.”

“I’ve heard of the Belmonts,” Adrian said. “My family...has had some dealings with them, in fact.”

Trevor grimaced. “I’m sorry. All I can say is that I don’t get along with my family. They _disapprove_ of me and how I feel about the Belmont holdings, so I finally just said fuck it. I split off from them as much as I could, got a few measly scholarships based on my merit instead of their money, and found the only goddamn university on the continent that didn’t have their fingers dug into it somehow.”

“Because of Chancellor Vlad.”

“Yeah. They used to be friends, actually, long before I was born—Vlad and my dad.” Trevor snickered darkly at the rhyme. “I don’t know what went wrong, exactly, but there’s bad blood between them now. My family hates him and _his_ entire family, so I figured...what better place to be? Plus, Wallachia has a great art conservation program, although that was more of a lucky bonus.”

“Chancellor Vlad has always been a great supporter of both the antiquities and the arts,” Adrian said, quietly. “His wife, Lisa, was a highly accomplished violinist. He met her at a symphony, and they...” He stopped, with a harsh intake of breath, then began again, transitioning to a new topic. “I know what it is to have a complicated relationship with one’s parents, and their expectations for you.”

Trevor hardly knew what to say; he was already vaguely regretting his own openness. Alcohol had an unfortunate way of loosening his tongue, which was part of what had gotten him in trouble with his family over the last few years—although there was more to it. A strange sense that Adrian was truly listening, that he actually understood him, beyond what Trevor could manage to put into words.

And now, with Adrian leaning solidly against him again, their heads comfortably tipped together—blond and admittedly unkempt dark brown, as different as two men could be yet somehow oddly similar—it was hard to think of anything else.

“Godbrand is no relation, incidentally,” Adrian said. “He’s merely the son of a business associate, and not a well-loved one. If you felt the need to punch him in his entirely insufferable face, I believe that my—I’m sure that it wouldn’t take much for the chancellor to look the other way.”

“Huh,” Trevor said, giving into the urge to twirl a silken strand of Adrian’s hair between the rough pads of his fingers, rather than wasting time wondering how he knew so much about the university’s inner workings. “Good to know. Just for the record, though, I’m glad the night turned out the way it did.”

“As am I, Trevor Belmont,” Adrian said, with a flash of his teeth that was finally soft enough to be a genuine smile.


	3. Chapter 3

They weren’t dating after that, exactly, but Adrian started coming back to the coffee shop during Trevor’s shifts, which was good enough for him.

“Don’t you struggle with your coursework, maintaining a schedule like this?” Adrian asked one night, after finding Trevor dozing with his elbows propped against the counter.

“Break, Sypha,” Trevor croaked out, not really giving a fuck if she could hear him from the kitchen, where she was finishing off a fresh batch of pastries. He poured Adrian’s latte on near autopilot but took the extra time to sketch whiskers and a dark mask into the foam. 

Adrian chuckled when Trevor set it in front of him. “Moving into self-portraits now. Impressive. The fur should be significantly shaggier, though, if you really intend it to match.”

“Eat shit,” Trevor said comfortably, sitting down across from him.

“It might be preferable to your attempts at baking,” Adrian replied. “I’m still struggling to pry that so-called muffin free from my molars. I may have broken one.”

“Look,” Trevor said, leaning back in his chair and letting his legs knock comfortably against Adrian’s, “you’re the one who can’t ingest dairy. Like it’s my fucking fault all the recipes are drier than the devil’s asshole.”

“A true poet, as always,” Adrian said, drinking his latte to hide the smile curving the edge of his mouth.

A few strands of his hair had slipped beneath the collar of his jacket—a shorter, less showy one, although he still wore the long coat on colder evenings—and Trevor reached across the table, without thinking, to lift them away from Adrian’s throat, tucking them behind the perfect curve of his ear.

Adrian’s eyelashes fluttered in surprise; he set his bowl down, his mouth soft and slightly parted.

“I take the shifts I have to,” Trevor said gruffly, folding his hands in front of him, to keep them from moving again of their own volition. “I finished off my requirements last year—that gets rid of all the science shit like chemistry, anthro, archaeology with Sypha, just one unit of art history left this semester—so mostly what I need is studio time. I fit that in where I can. Plus the internship at the museum, which takes up a good chunk of daylight hours, so.”

“So you fill out your nights with something that brings in a paycheck,” Adrian finished. “The internship isn’t paid?”

“It counts towards credits. No reason to pay students, when our labor’s already a guarantee.”

Adrian’s lips dipped into a frown. “That seems like an issue my fa—the administration should know about.”

“The faculty’s well aware,” Trevor said, with an expressive shrug. “Don’t get me wrong; it’s a good internship. I’m hoping it’ll turn into something after. But of course, when what I’m doing now—what I’m qualified for—can be done by the next crop of students...” It was an argument, unfortunately, he’d had with his father many times, so he knew every line by heart. With Adrian, he always found he could be more honest. “It’ll take years for me to build up the expertise I need for the next levels. And more school, probably, if I can afford it.”

“Without touching Belmont money,” Adrian said, his tone even, not judging.

Trevor dug the side of his thumbnail into the tabletop. “Using their connections would make it easier. As it is, they’re probably fucking blacklisting me instead.”

Their attention was pulled to the piano across the room, where a drunk student had wandered over to trail his fingers clumsily over the keys. They were always drunk at this hour, or belligerent, or falling asleep on their feet, or three seconds away from puking on the freshly-cleaned floors—often all four categories at once. Adrian winced when the student flattened both hands against the ivories, hammering out a crescendo of noise that only stopped when Sypha shooed him back to his booth with the end of a broom.

“At least once a week,” she sighed, stopping by Adrian’s table to tell Trevor his break was long over. “Every last one of them thinks they’re Beethoven.”

“Why do you keep the piano?” Adrian asked. “Is it decorative, to go with the name?”

“Symphonic Beans,” Trevor chortled, mostly to himself, since he was the only one who never got tired of the joke. “It’s the worst bloody name, all I can ever think of is—”

Sypha smacked him on the back of the head, her usual deterrent. “He thinks his crass humor has merit,” she told Adrian. “And no, not entirely, at least not in theory. It’s still tuned regularly. You could try it, if you like; it’d be nice to hear someone with actual talent play it for a change.”

“You play?” Trevor asked, swiveling back to look at Adrian, who inclined his head lightly.

“Some,” he said. “If you really don’t mind, Sypha?”

“Please,” she said, taking Adrian’s chair when he vacated it for the piano bench. “Do you always learn this little about the people you sleep with?” she asked Trevor.

“Excuse me for not putting musical abilities at the top of my list,” Trevor began, cutting himself short at the first touch of Adrian’s fingers to the keys. He turned his chair fully around, not heeding the scrape of its metal feet against the flooring. “Shit,” he said, softly.

“He’s a music major,” Sypha said. “And a concert pianist, both on and off campus. If you’d gone to any of the programs I’ve invited you to over the last four years, you would’ve seen him earlier.”

“Music is bloody boring,” Trevor said automatically—and absently, with his attention fixed on the mesmerizing arc of Adrian’s hands lifting off the keys, freeing notes that were pure and crisp, like droplets of light that Trevor could almost visualize. His own fingers itched for pencil and paper as Adrian’s began to ripple through something sweeter and more sorrowful, his body curving towards the piano, then away, in a fluid rhythm as though his entire being was a part of the composition.

It ended too soon: two minutes, at most, with Trevor unaccountably aching for more.

“Five more minutes,” Sypha warned him as she went back to the register. “Or I’m docking your pay. Don’t think I won’t, Trevor Belmont.”

Adrian looked slightly flushed when he sat down; he wouldn’t quite meet Trevor’s eyes. “An abbreviated version,” he said. “Porumbescu isn’t a crowd-pleaser, I’m afraid. I forgot where I was for a moment.”

“There’s more to it?” Trevor asked, leaning forward with his palms flattened against the tabletop, his fingers bare inches from Adrian’s and still... _wanting_. Longing for the rest, to discover what images he could draw from Adrian’s unexpected shadows.

“Significantly,” Adrian said, after tracing his golden gaze over Trevor’s face, leaving scorched paths in his wake. “I could show you. I have a better piano at my place. With more privacy.”

“Sypha,” Trevor called, jolting to his feet and grabbing his jacket and bag from behind the counter. “I’m clocking out early, I’m sorry, I swear I’ll make it up to you, see you tomorrow.”

***

“I never knew you were such a lover of music,” Adrian said as they tumbled through his front door—not quite breathlessly, although Trevor was determined to figure out what could get him to that state.

They’d fucked twice more since their first time. Once in the tiny storage closet at work, to Sypha’s absolute horror once she’d found out, and once in Trevor’s piece of shit car, parked high on a dark hillside—much to _Adrian’s_ dismay once he realized that he’d somehow gotten a well-chewed clot of gum matted in his hair. Trevor had spent the rest of the night apologizing and carefully peeling it free, strand by strand, neither of them willing to disfigure Adrian’s hair with scissors. On the plus side, Adrian had gotten more talkative after the first thirty minutes, growing pliant under the deft touch of Trevor’s fingers against his sensitive scalp—artists’ fingers, Adrian had called them. _Make me your clay_ , he’d moaned at one point, then violently pinned Trevor to the cracked-leather backseat until he’d sworn never to repeat that to anyone.

On the negative side, after the car incident, Adrian had flatly refused to have sex with Trevor anywhere resembling a public space, or in Trevor’s studio, correctly assuming it would be in largely the same state as his car. And Adrian had never extended an invitation to his.

“I love,” Trevor said agreeably, “music. Every kind of,” he groaned into Adrian’s mouth, tugging at the hem of his shirt until Adrian took the hint and lifted his arms so Trevor could pull it over his head. “Fucking music,” Trevor finished, shoving Adrian against the door in an attempt to draw as many noises out of him as possible.

“Fucking music is a specific genre,” Adrian said, shoving back so he could work Trevor’s zipper open. “I might have to add it to my repertoire.”

They didn’t take the time for anything elaborate—just jerking each other off, hard and fast, Adrian using Trevor’s shirt to clean them both before refastening his pants and finally moving out of the entryway, as casually as though he’d simply stopped to check the mail.

As always, Trevor took longer to pull himself back together. He kicked his boots off, leaving them by Adrian’s, and considered his cum-stained shirt before remembering that Adrian hadn’t bothered to put his—far cleaner one—back on.

“Host’s rules,” Trevor muttered, and followed the quiet sound of a piano—a few absent chords, at first, before it transitioned into the music he’d heard earlier.

Adrian’s flat was far nicer than Trevor’s, and at least three times the size, but it wasn’t as wealth-soaked as he’d imagined. The furnishings were simple, with an open floor plan: a clean, modern kitchen; a dining area with a table no larger than theirs at the coffee shop; a bathroom he caught a glimpse of through an open doorway; and a larger section lined on two sides by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, with a king-sized bed in the middle of the room and a huge grand piano at the far end, situated horizontally by a wall of windows that seemed to open onto a narrow balcony.

Adrian hadn’t turned on any lamps, but the moon was nearly full and did its part to illuminate the glossy piano—and the porcelain-skinned, golden-haired man at its keys.

Trevor stood back, well out of the light, and watched, until Adrian’s body began swaying into the music again. The craving resurfaced, then, stronger than before; Adrian was right about the intimacy of the song, the need for it to be performed in a space like this.

Making his way back to the pile of things they’d dropped by the door, Trevor rummaged for his bag. It was small and light: on most days, all it contained was his wallet, his keys, and a sketchbook. He always kept the book—and a sleeve of pencils—close at hand, in a spot where he could easily grab it at work. On quieter nights, before Adrian had come along as a distraction, Trevor would use the slow drag of empty hours to fill its pages. With life studies, if there was anyone interesting enough to capture, or with less concrete ideas that’d been brimming in his head as he cleaned dishes and counted change and brewed one coffee after another.

He settled onto Adrian’s bed now, one leg thrown in front of him, the other tucked into a makeshift surface he could prop the sketchbook on. As Adrian played, Trevor drew.

Trevor was still sketching when the music faded into its last liquid notes, using the sides of his fingers to rub in shadows and contrast, wishing he had better materials with him. Ideally charcoal, although Adrian would never let something like that near his sheets.

The mattress dipped; Trevor looked up from his paper to find that the piano was empty. A second later, long arms snaked around him, a warm chest pressing against his back as a sharp chin dug into his bare shoulder.

“A vast improvement on the latte version,” Adrian said, in his usual deep, pleasant tones. “Is that how I look when I play?”

“You’ve never seen yourself?” Trevor asked. Adrian didn’t seem to be trying to stop him, so he kept going, filling in the rest from memory. The first few sketches had been simply to get a feel for the shapes: the piano, the thick beam of moonlight cutting across the floor, the pained arc of Adrian’s body as it bowed towards the keys, his muscles taut with the emotion he was pouring into his music. Trevor wasn’t good with words—never had been—but this he could do. The drawing he was working on, with Adrian quietly watching him, was a more detailed one, cropped at Adrian’s waist, with his face half-revealed by moonlight, half-veiled by the spill of his hair.

“It’s darker than it should be,” Trevor muttered, frustrated. Maybe pastels would be better, so he could get the colors right, although there was something about the greyscale that...

“What,” he said, bumping the side of his head lightly against Adrian’s, who hadn’t moved. “I can hear you thinking. It’s distracting.”

“I’ve never seen myself like this, no,” Adrian said. “I don’t like watching concert films. And I suspect they’d never capture me in quite the same way as you’ve done. But I’ve never seen you like this, either. You’re...calm. Focused.”

Trevor chuckled. “Not a bumbling idiot for once, you mean. I did earn my way here, Adrian; I’m not stupid.”

“I never thought you were,” Adrian said. His eyelashes were so long that with their faces pressed this close together, Trevor could feel them brushing against his cheek as Adrian spoke. “You’re passionate, and eager, and I like that about you. You say what you’re thinking, even if it’s not the wisest time to do so, and you go after what you want, even if it might seem foolish to others. In comparison, I’ve lived a life of relative...restraint, you could say.”

“No shit,” Trevor snorted, and Adrian dug his chin deeper.

“Don’t sully the moment, Trevor. I don’t often dole out compliments; I’m feeling sentimental tonight.”

The drawing was as good as Trevor could make it; he’d revisit the subject later. He set the sketchbook aside, covering Adrian’s hands—interlocked around his waist—with his. “Because of the song?”

“It’s a baladǎ. Meant for two: a violin, carrying the heart of the composition, with a piano as accompaniment. What I was playing was an arrangement. Novàček’s attempt to separate out the piano, giving it a voice of its own. But to me it always feels...”

“Lonely,” Trevor said, finally able to identify the emotion in Adrian’s expression, in his own drawing.

“There’s no way to hide that a part will always be missing,” Adrian said. “The superior piece, the brilliant soul that by its very existence casts everything else in shadow.”

He released his grip as Trevor turned in his arms. Adrian had been sitting cross-legged; he unfolded them at Trevor’s touch, falling backward when prompted, his hair pooling across his pillow, framing tense shoulders and a face that was still sharp with sadness.

Trevor undid Adrian’s belts first—those ridiculous bits of decorative leather, strapped high on either side of his bare waist—then pushed his pants down his thighs, then lower, inch by slow inch, kissing each new section of pale skin as it was revealed. He lifted one slender foot, then the other, freeing them from fabric that he threw off the side of the bed.

Adrian’s disgruntled response— _would you please take some care; do you have any idea how much those cost?_ —faded away when Trevor kissed his ankle, the arch of a foot that seemed so much more delicate than his own, the long toes that curled a little at the ticklish scrape of his scruff.

“Trevor,” Adrian protested, somewhere close to laughter now, but sounding far more relaxed.

Trevor sat back—removing his pants was easier, since they weren’t nearly suctioned to his skin—and tossed his clothing wherever Adrian’s had landed. Dark work slacks, followed by his underwear: Adrian, of course, hadn’t been wearing any. He slid back up Adrian’s body then, ignoring the half-hard cock nestled against a muscular thigh. Adrian still wouldn’t allow himself to be kissed with his own taste in Trevor’s mouth.

Something they could work on, Trevor thought, not caring much about anything once Adrian tapped an insistent tongue against his lips, demanding entrance.

They moved against each other as they kissed, until they were both fully hard and aching. Adrian looped one ankle around the back of Trevor’s thigh, then the other, once the simple friction was no longer enough.

“Fuck me, Trevor,” he said, pushing his hips up, grunting in displeasure when that still didn’t give him what he was needing. “Fuck me until I can’t move my fucking legs. I want to still feel you tomorrow.”

“Are you always this foul-mouthed in bed, your highness?” Trevor asked, pulling back a little instead of complying. “Or just used to getting exactly what you want, whenever the fuck you want it.”

Adrian’s eyes flashed; he lunged upward and bit Trevor, sharply, on the edge of his jaw. “Fuck you,” he spat out, flushing red with impatience and anger.

“Make up your mind,” Trevor said. “I don’t know if I have the energy to do both tonight.”

To Trevor’s surprise, that made Adrian laugh. He moved one long-fingered hand—pianists’ fingers, how had Trevor not seen it before—to cradle the back of Trevor’s neck, the touch far more gentle than the still-insistent tug of his heels against Trevor’s legs.

“Maybe another night,” he said, his voice less polished than usual, gruffly warm with affection. “Please, Trevor. I don’t like to beg.”

“I won’t make you,” Trevor promised, leaning down to rub his scruff against Adrian’s cheek, then slot their mouths together—keeping the distance between their bodies intact, not yielding fully to him yet.

At some point, Adrian had managed to unearth both condoms and lube: a multi-tasker, Trevor thought, impressed. He had to stop to squeeze the base of his cock—it’d _still_ been a while, since everything they’d done so far had been rough and dirty, with no time or space for a leisurely, full-body fuck.

The box of condoms was new; Trevor broke the seal and sat back slightly to let Adrian roll one onto his cock with his usual easy grace. He was good at this, Trevor thought, wondering why that made him feel strange, with the number of times his own cock had been shoved into unfamiliar, nearly nameless bodies. A man like Adrian would’ve had his pick—far beyond who was available on campus, at bars or filthy frat parties.

Trevor uncapped the bottle of lube—half-empty, not something Adrian had brought home just for tonight—and warmed a generous amount in his hands before rubbing it along the length of his cock, then dipping two fingers into the hot, tight hole that Adrian had reached down to spread for him.

Adrian was sharply observant, even like this: he tilted his head to the side, his hair tumbling over his throat, and said, with a flutter of his eyelashes that meant he was regretting the words even as they came out, “I use it when thinking of you.”

Trevor kissed the flush across Adrian’s collarbones. His turn to say things he’d regret.

“Are you sleeping with anyone else?”

He knew his voice wasn’t as level as he would’ve liked, although he grunted heavily on the last word, pretending he was focused on the slick slide of his fingers inside Adrian. Trevor kept his attention angled down, watching his knuckles push deeper, Adrian’s body accepting him willingly.

Adrian let Trevor take over from there, smoothing his palms up Trevor’s sides, until one hand was buried in his hair again, rubbing lightly, soothingly, at his scalp.

“No,” Adrian said, simply, without any fuss or further explanation.

“Same,” Trevor said, feeling his face heat, hoping that Adrian would merely see it as a sign of his increasing arousal. Although he couldn’t just...that was unclear, and Trevor had been trying to use his words better. “I mean, I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”

There was a hint of a smile in Adrian’s voice when he replied, “I have very little interest in doing this with anyone else.”

“Little?” Trevor asked, since he was too much of an idiot to leave it there.

The smile was stronger now; Trevor couldn’t help darting a glance up, to where Adrian was watching him without any of his usual cool detachment.

“None, at present,” he said. “Although I may change my mind if you don’t get on with it.”

The threat was empty; they both knew it, and Trevor took his time, replacing his fingers with his cock, pushing in as slowly as he could manage with Adrian as an extremely active participant. Adrian’s body was like nothing he’d ever felt. He wasn’t sure if it was objectively the best sex he’d had—he’d never been one to track that kind of thing, despising the charts kept in the basements of many houses on frat row, with the female population scored and ranked, in detail. Trevor had destroyed one board prior to his suspension, but he knew there were more. Too many, in a battle that was too big for him to fight.

“What are you thinking of?” Adrian asked, feeling his attention stray.

“You,” Trevor said, which made it true.

Comparisons didn’t matter, or the fact that it was going to be much too fast, with Adrian urging him on, keeping his thrusts at a tempo that he hadn’t yet built up the stamina to maintain. All Trevor cared about was that it was good now, and it would get better, if it was something Adrian continued to want from him.

Trevor kissed him, and swore, and tried to fight his own body, but Adrian touched cool fingers to his burning cheeks and told him to let go.

“Fuck,” he groaned eloquently, collapsing against Adrian, his softened cock slipping free of Adrian’s body. He could feel Adrian’s still-hard cock pressing against his belly, but he couldn’t bring himself to move or do anything about it, not yet.

“If you fall asleep on me like this, we’ll have words tomorrow,” Adrian warned him, stroking delicate fingers through his hair, then taking him by the scruff of his neck and shaking him, lightly. “Get off, Trevor.”

“I already did,” he mumbled into Adrian’s chest, which rumbled under him in response.

“For fuck’s sake,” Adrian said, pushing Trevor until he rolled onto his back.

“Mmm, good,” Trevor murmured when Adrian straddled him, all cold fury and flashing eyes, with his hand around his own dick.

It didn’t take long—a few firm strokes, the steady pump of an arm that certainly knew how _this_ part went—before Adrian was spilling over Trevor’s chest, then rubbing his own mess into Trevor’s skin, as if he thought it was some sort of punishment. Or maybe he just liked it, the secretly dirty bastard, Trevor thought, tugging Adrian down to see if he was still willing to kiss him.

“Next time we’ll do this earlier in the day,” Adrian said, when even their kisses started turning sloppy, Trevor’s heart willing but his body too exhausted to do much about it. He didn’t sound angry at all anymore; he was smiling, those unusually long canines no longer hidden or unfamiliar.

“Next time,” Trevor said agreeably, but did put up a fight when Adrian dragged him out of bed and into the shower.

He didn’t even seem intent on doing anything interesting under the aggressively powerful showerhead; the space was really too small for two grown men, so they took turns standing beneath the spray, Adrian scrubbing Trevor’s back with a scratchy sponge, then letting Trevor pull his wet hair away from the nape of his neck, kissing the soft, secret skin there.

“Do you ever put your hair up?” Trevor asked, twining the heavy length around his wrist.

“Sometimes,” Adrian said, widening his stance to keep his balance as he turned his head to look at Trevor over his shoulder. “Rarely. It gives me a headache.”

Sadly, Trevor’s refractory period hadn’t ended yet; he pushed his hips forward anyway, lightly rubbing his soft dick against Adrian’s firmly muscled ass, then hooked his chin over Adrian’s shoulder so he could watch himself jerking off Adrian’s far more responsive cock.

“I’m surprised to find that bathing turns you on,” Adrian murmured, bracing one palm against the tiles and moving the other behind him, to Trevor’s waist, guiding him through a steady rocking motion that eventually accomplished his goal.

Three times in one evening was a stretch for Trevor; he was already wrung dry, but he was able to groan against the side of Adrian’s throat, his hips shuddering, before he carried Adrian over the edge with him.

***

“Is that part of your vampire nature?” Trevor asked sleepily, once they were back in bed. He’d expected Adrian to send him home after their shower, but he hadn’t volunteered, and Adrian hadn’t asked. “An insatiable need for sex.”

“You say that as though you weren’t an equal participant,” Adrian said. He tilted his head into Trevor’s hand, clearly enjoying Trevor’s fingers in his hair—soft and still a little warm from his blow dryer. It was difficult for Trevor to stop touching him. “And no, believe it or not, this is rather new for me. For some unfathomable reason, I tend to get hard at the thought of you. One never can account for taste.”

They talked for a bit after that, quietly. Adrian told him some about his music, and the recital he was putting together as his capstone requirement. Trevor talked about art, as he rarely got a chance to do outside of school.

“So you prefer to restore, rather than create?” Adrian asked.

“It’s not two separate things,” Trevor said. He’d had this conversation, too, with his parents, although in a far more antagonistic tone. “It’s like...well, you don’t compose every song you play, do you? You’re taking something that already exists and interpreting it. Making it beautiful again in your hands.”

“I have no skill for composition,” Adrian said. “You do. It’s difficult for me to imagine someone with that much creativity spending all your days hunched over other people’s work. You’ll never be recognized for your part in it.”

Trevor shrugged, trailing his calloused fingers down Adrian’s chest. He was lying on his side, propped up on an elbow, enjoying the sight of Adrian next to him. “I don’t care about that part,” he said. “My name’s been in newspapers since literally before I was born. I’d rather be anonymous and do what I like. Something worthwhile.”

“And restoration, for you, is that.” Adrian sounded like he was genuinely trying to understand.

Trevor idly rubbed the pad of his thumb along the thick scar that snaked its way from Adrian’s navel to his shoulder, in a diagonal that was never quite visible in even his low-necked shirts. It was an ugly, puckered thing that stood out against his otherwise flawless skin. “There’s beauty in brokenness,” he said. “The Venus de Milo—people line up to see her because her fucking arms fell off.”

The tension Trevor had felt in Adrian’s body dissipated. “Is this how you write your essays?”

“Sometimes,” Trevor said. His professors had gotten used to him. “Age and decay isn’t always seen as a bad thing in the art world; maybe it’s transforming, over time, into something more interesting, where you can actually see the weight of history. But art's about preservation, too. Being able to see the same shit our grandparents did, or generations before that, in more or less the same way. And I like the sense that I can do something to help. Fix some of the bullshit the world’s always throwing at us.” 

Adrian reached up to trace cool fingertips over Trevor’s eyebrow, following the angry red line that bisected it and cut down his cheek. It’d narrowly missed blinding him.

“You wear your scars openly,” Adrian said.

“I don’t exactly have a choice,” Trevor said, but Adrian shook his head.

“I don’t mean on the physical level. You may pretend not to be, but you’re brave, Trevor Belmont. Not all of us have the strength to break away from our families so easily.”

“Is that something you want?”

Adrian dropped his arm, covering Trevor’s hand with his, to still the motion along his chest. “My father changed after my mother’s death. He’s...crueler, now. Angrier than I remember him. I think I remind him too much of her. I have her face, her hair; this scar is something that won’t let either of us forget.”

“How did you get it?” Trevor asked, since it seemed now that he was allowed.

Adrian was quiet for a while before speaking; his voice was hushed, but not reluctant. “My mother died when I was ten,” he said. “It was before my father had fully transitioned to academia; he was a businessman, like your father. A highly successful one, and not popular amongst even his colleagues. He had enemies. The rivals you'd expect. Some he’d once considered friends.”

Trevor let him process his thoughts, then continue.

“I’m sure some of it was warranted; some was probably due to jealousy. I have a child’s bias: I grew up with two loving, deeply affectionate parents. I couldn’t imagine my father being in the wrong, not when someone like my mother adored him. And it may be pointless to even dwell on that, to wonder if someone else could've been responsible for what happened; it's more likely that the official reports were correct, that it was merely an accident—a fault in the wiring.” Adrian’s fingers clenched more tightly around Trevor’s. “My father was out of the country. My mother was working late, into the early hours, at one of his offices—finalizing details for a charity, I think. That was the influence she had on him. I’d insisted on going with her; even at that age, I didn’t like being alone.”

“And the accident?” Trevor asked.

“A fire.” Adrian’s eyes grew distant, his voice quieter. “It started on the ground floor and worked its way up; the alarms were faulty, so by the time we felt the heat, we were already breathing in the smoke. We made it a few floors down before a beam collapsed. I wasn’t old enough, or strong enough, to lift it off my mother. Then the flames reached us.”

He pressed his other hand, the one not holding Trevor’s, against the jagged edge on his shoulder.

“My mother—she was trapped, but awake. She told me to go. She made me promise, and I...I ran.”

“You were ten,” Trevor said. “The fucking building was on fire.”

“I was a coward,” Adrian replied, with a lift to his eyebrows that meant he truly believed it. “This is the only mark on me. No burns, no evidence that I tried to save her. Just a piece of glass, slicing me open, when I broke a window to flee.”

He turned his face away, clearly not wanting Trevor to respond further, but not letting go of him.

Trevor asked, anyway, never able to heed the signs that were supposed to warn him. “So that’s how you knew so much about coffins.”

Adrian’s eyelashes fluttered, a few beats of internal protest, before he said, “My father was overcome by grief. I handled much of the arrangements. My mother’s favorite flowers were lilies; that’s what I remember most, even more than the sound of her voice. The sweet stench, masking the decay. I still feel ill when I see them now.”

A lonely prince in his tower, Trevor thought, with an ache he could feel throughout his entire body.

“I was twelve when I got mine,” he said, grating it out, because...Adrian deserved at least this, a portion of the story Trevor had never told anyone. No one but he and his father had ever known the truth, and Trevor had assumed it’d stay that way forever.

Adrian turned his head back, slightly. Listening.

“My dad took me on a big game hunt. Meant to be the first of many, my chance to prove that I was a man.”

“Because taking innocent lives in cold blood is the way to accomplish that,” Adrian said, his words like ice.

“I wasn’t good at it,” Trevor said. An understatement. “I refused to go, but he forced me. They all did. They said it was the Belmont way. Our library has the heads mounted along the wall, each one with a placard listing the Belmont responsible. My grandfather’s first lion is stuffed in the corner. Twisted, limbs broken and reshaped into a snarling attack, like it’d ever had the fucking chance.”

Adrian’s eyes were fully on Trevor now, tracking the emotions he couldn’t keep out of his face. “So a beast did this to you?”

“Yes,” Trevor said. “But not the one we were hunting.”

***

Trevor woke to sunlight, with a dry, gritty mouth and eyes that were clumped with sleep. It was dawn; the light was still cool and crisp, in quieter shades that wouldn’t fully warm until the world had stirred from the shadows.

He nearly buried his head under his pillow—he’d worked late, and stayed up until the early hours of the morning, talking, so there was no sense in getting up _now_ , when his body had barely had a chance to rest—but the pillow was Adrian’s, not his, the sheets soft and smelling of Adrian’s shampoo. He blinked, and rubbed his eyes. There was a nightstand, too—something he didn’t own—with Adrian’s contacts case neatly set on top of it, next to his much more familiar sketchbook. He turned, blearily, onto his side and realized he’d been woken by music.

It was the first time Trevor had ever seen Adrian in the daylight. He was so bright it nearly hurt: Trevor squinted, letting his eyes adjust until he could pick out more than a blurred flash of gold against the broad stretch of windows.

Adrian hadn’t bothered to put on his discarded clothing; although the movement of his body was beautiful, an eloquent flow of muscles and sinew that was more pronounced when he was standing and fully bare, there was, somehow, nothing sensual about it. Trevor could almost feel the smoothly polished wood of the violin against Adrian’s shoulder, could see the vibrations of the violin strings under his fingertips.

It was the song from the night before—the baladǎ, Adrian had called it. Still broken, only one part of the whole, but with a more profound sense of melancholy that tore at Trevor’s emotions. The violin was weeping—and so was Adrian, Trevor realized, when that tightly-strung body swung forward, then arched back in time with the rapid scrapes of the bow, his hair falling away from his face.

Adrian’s expression was still, almost peaceful, with no visible lines of sorrow marring his perfect skin—but there were tears streaming silently down his cheeks, droplets flicking into the air like shards of glass as he dipped again into a plaintive whisper, the violin’s agony subdued, asking, rather than demanding, that someone listen.

Adrian’s chest was heaving when he finished. He dropped his arm to his side, the violin dangling from shaking fingers, and bowed his head. Trevor closed his eyes, and turned away from the window, not sure he’d been meant to see it.

The bed dipped after a few moments; silken hair fell over Trevor’s shoulder and along his arm, and a soft mouth brushed against his throat.

“I’m sorry,” Adrian said. “I’m not used to anyone being in my...I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s a strange form of sleep-walking,” Trevor said, shifting to his back so he could better see the face looking down on him.

Adrian’s dark eyelashes were wet, but there was a smile touching his lips. “I have trouble sleeping during certain hours of the night,” he said, as he’d told Trevor before. The context was different now. “I can...try to improve that. If it disturbs you.”

Trevor simply drew him down, until Adrian settled against his body, their limbs fitting comfortably together. “I don’t care,” he said, his voice rough and scratchy, as it usually was this early in the day. “But _I’m_ going back to sleep now. You can do whatever the hell you want.”

“You’re an oddly good man, Trevor Belmont,” Adrian said, quietly, once Trevor had nearly drifted off again. “I’m glad to have met you.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You’re lucky I don’t fire you,” Sypha said that evening. “But it’s nice to see you happy, Trevor.”

Trevor _was_ feeling particularly cheerful. Adrian had still been in bed with him the second time he’d woken, the sharp lines of his beautiful face slack with sleep, his limbs still wrapped loosely around Trevor’s. He’d been drooling a little, too, which Trevor fully intended to give him shit about when he came in later.

Perfection was different up close, when you could see each individually lumpy dab of paint, or even the faint sketch lines behind the oil. It was better that way; Trevor had always thought so.

“It’s funny though,” Sypha said as Trevor fastened the apron he often refused to wear and began restocking the pastries for their first rush: with midterms getting closer and everyone realizing their project deadlines actually mattered, there was more of a demand on sugar and caffeine to keep them going.

“What is?” Trevor asked when she didn’t continue.

She shook her head, brushing a few flyaway strands of red-orange hair out of her face. “Oh, I’m still a bit surprised you two get along so well. I thought at first you were only spending time with him to get under both your parents’ skin, but it’s good to see that it’s become more than that.”

“My parents?” Trevor asked, not sure what they had to do with anything. They hated a lot of things about him, but his bisexuality had never been one of the issues. And even his fucking parents couldn't object to someone like Adrian as a potential son-in-law.

“Your parents, his father,” Sypha clarified, like Trevor was supposed to know what the fuck she was talking about.

Her eyes widened when he didn’t respond—big, blue, and as full of judgment as the day they’d first met, when he’d accidentally knocked her off her bike, she’d thrown a rock at him instead of crying over her skinned knee, and they’d wound up buying each other ice cream cones as a shared apology. They’d been best friends pretty much ever since.

“Trevor Belmont,” Sypha said. “You’re telling me that you somehow don’t actually _know_?”

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed _to_ know,” he burst out in frustration. He took a five dollar bill from a student, handed over a pastry and the change, and turned back to her. “I can’t read minds, Sypha.”

She was still watching him, looking amused now. “Trevor. What’s the chancellor’s name?”

“What the fuck does that have to with—Vlad. Chancellor Vlad.”

“His _other_ name,” she said patiently.

Trevor stared at her for a second. “Oh! Dracula?” He chuckled, finishing up another transaction. “Because he _looks_ like a Transylvanian vampire bastard, with all that stringy dark hair and his stupid pointy goatee, and the way he stalks around wearing head-to-toe black all the time and looking miserable, and how he’s so pale it’s like he’s never seen the sunlight. And he’s got those weird teeth, too, like...”

He stopped. Trevor had never seen canines that looked so much like fucking fangs before. Until.

“Chancellor Vlad Ţepeş,” he said, slowly. He knew the guy’s last name—with their strained family connection, of course he did. But he hadn’t...after that first night, Adrian had always paid with cash, simply handing Trevor a crisp ten dollar bill and refusing to take any change. With the weirdness of the rest of his name, and the distraction of his even more ridiculous face, Trevor hadn’t...

“Shit,” he said. “There’s no way.”

“You knew he had a son who went here,” Sypha said. “We all started the same year. I don’t understand how you didn’t make this connection before.”

Everyone knew about Vlad’s son; Trevor had never actually seen him, but he’d heard plenty about him, especially at the glut of parties his freshman year. Mini-Vlad was rich as fuck and had gotten immediate approval for off-campus housing, which made everyone instantly hate him, Trevor included.

“His name did start with an A,” Trevor said, “but it was like. Adam? No! Alucard, that’s it.”

Sypha simply looked at him.

“...which is Dracula backwards,” Trevor said, then again, more vehemently, “Shit.”

Chancellor Vlad’s son was reportedly blond, as pretty as a girl, and such a mirror image of him—which was funny, because vampires—that someone had jokingly coined the name. It’d caught on, like shit like that always did. Trevor had a sinking, horrible feeling that he might’ve been the one to come up with the name if someone else hadn’t already done it first.

“Why _else_ were you making fun of him, then, if you didn’t even know who he was?” Sypha asked, slapping a coffee down on the counter.

“Because he was pretty!” Trevor exploded. The student who came up for his drink jumped back, then warily took the cup and fled. “And I don’t know how to fucking hit on anyone that fucking gorgeous, okay?”

“And yet your love life is somehow more successful than mine,” Sypha said, sounding weary.

“I thought you only cared about rocks,” Trevor said.

“ _Ruins_ ,” she corrected. “I’m an archaeologist, not a geologist. And yes. But that’s not the point.”

“I’m dating Dracula’s son,” Trevor said, leaning his forearms across the counter, thinking about it. “My dad is going to fucking _hate_ this.”

***

“Why didn’t you tell me your dad is fucking Dracula,” Trevor said, sliding into the chair across from Adrian. _Alucard_ , who’d draped his vampire coat over the back of his chair, its train spilling across the floor in a wide arc behind him, and who was wearing three rings, one of which was shaped something like a bat.

Adrian gave him a sharp-toothed smile. “Because you might’ve stopped inviting me in,” he said smoothly.

Trevor snorted. “You’re a bastard. And I’m an idiot. I can’t believe you let me talk all this shit about him without saying anything.”

“Your rant about the administration’s spineless, money-grubbing attempts to flay their students dry and then gnaw on their bones before grinding them into soup for their dogs was a particularly good one,” Adrian said placidly. “You know I don’t have entirely fond feelings toward my father. Although I do rather wish I’d grown up with a dog.”

“Yeah,” Trevor said. “But still, I’m sorry for being a dick about him. And to you, I guess.”

“I haven’t always been the most pleasant, either,” Adrian said. He looked down at his bowl, where Trevor had drawn a flock of bats, with a last minute tiny heart in the corner that he’d waffled over leaving intact. Judging from the uptick of Adrian’s lips, he saw it. “I think we’ve made up for that in recent days. Unless this changes anything?”

Trevor shook his head. “Not for me. I already knew you were filthy rich.”

“Mm,” Adrian said. “And I’ve known for some time that you were a Belmont. My father curses your family name often. I’m not clear on the details either; whatever your parents did to him before you and I were born, it’s had a lasting impact. I’m surprised he allowed your entrance here, but I suppose it’s always best to keep your enemies closer.”

“Is he going to hate me?” Trevor asked, wishing he didn’t care about the answer. Not that he thought Adrian would _break up_ with him—if they were even officially dating—but it was always better to know these sorts of things in advance.

Adrian made a considering noise. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought of a good way yet to introduce you.”

“But you have thought about it,” Trevor said, leaning forward, knowing he was being a fucking disaster but completely failing at stopping himself. Shit, if he’d known he’d get this _maudlin_ over someone he was sleeping with, even without any alcohol involved...well, he would’ve still done it. Fucking obviously.

“I bought you a toothbrush,” Adrian reminded him. He’d color-coded them: red for Trevor, yellow for himself, with his tucked safely away in the cabinet and Trevor’s very clearly labeled in a cup that had his name printed on it.

Trevor had still considered using Adrian’s toothbrush, just to be an utter dickbag, but he knew full well that Adrian could probably kick his ass. And he very much wanted to be able to keep kissing him.

“So that’s like moving in,” Trevor said.

Adrian inhaled sharply, probably thinking of the pile of dirty socks he’d found in the back of Trevor’s car—he’d run out of quarters, Trevor had explained defensively, and one of the fucking machines was broken anyway—and how very little privacy he’d have in even an apartment his size, once two people were sharing it.

“I’m just kidding,” Trevor said, reaching across the table to cover Adrian’s hand. “I’m not a fucking sponge. And hell, you haven’t even _seen_ my place yet; you don’t know what I’d be missing if I gave it up.”

“The friendship of a rather large number of rats, I imagine,” Adrian said. “And for the record, I...wouldn’t rule that out. As a concept for the future.”

“Visiting my roach-infested studio?” Trevor asked, just to make Adrian give him that familiar narrow-eyed, unamused look.

“Do you call it that because of its size, or do you actually paint there?”

“Can’t really paint,” Trevor said. “There’s not enough light, and barely room for an easel, if I want a bed my legs fit on. I draw there, mostly.”

“Like in your sketchbook,” Adrian said, lifting his bowl to sip delicately from it. “What,” he said, when he saw Trevor grinning at him. He licked carefully at his lips, like he’d gotten latte foam on his face—or like it would’ve done anything to mar his appearance if so.

“I spent the night at your place,” Trevor said.

“I’m well aware,” Adrian replied dryly. “Will we be revisiting this all night?”

“Which means that when you made breakfast for me this morning—well, early afternoon, whatever,” Trevor said, “I saw your espresso machine.”

Adrian flushed and set the bowl back down. “It was broken. For a time.”

“That’s why you went to Carmilla’s?”

“I occasionally go for walks at night, anyway,” Adrian said. Probably when the emptiness of his apartment began pressing in on him too much. “I thought I’d try a drink that was a little more complex than what I make for myself. And then...”

“And then you found me,” Trevor said.

Adrian didn’t roll his eyes, but it was a close call. “I stumbled upon this establishment. Where despite having the manners of a drunken bear, the barista made a surprisingly excellent cup of coffee.”

“But have you ever actually seen a bear in its element?” Trevor asked, his ankle caught between Adrian’s under the table. “Those fuckers are fast. I wouldn’t necessarily say graceful, but...”

“You have to witness them in the right setting,” Adrian said. “Since you’re pressing for a compliment, Belmont: I came for the coffee and stayed for the conversation, much to my surprise. If you’d like me to stop giving you six dollar tips each evening I’m here, all you have to do is say the word, and I’ll return to my fully repaired machine.”

Trevor laughed. “Sypha and I are putting the money into a special fund. I wanted to call it the Get-Adrian’s-Head-Out-Of-His-Ass Fund, but she wouldn’t let me. We have more than enough for a decent pizza party, though, if you’re interested. But you have to be willing to drink beer and watch shitty movies.”

Adrian wrinkled his nose, somehow managing to make even that look incredibly elegant.

“Fine,” Trevor said. “You can bring your bloody wine. And we’ll obviously pick up a couple pizzas with that fake-ass vegan cheese for your princess-and-the-pea stomach. But the bad movies are non-negotiable.”

“Sounds delightful,” Adrian said, “although I’m not sure who you’d be in that fairy tale. Are you casting yourself as the prince, or the mother tormenting a harmless stranger?”

Trevor opened his mouth to respond, but shrank back at the death glare coming from the tiny redhead across the room. “Fuck—speaking of Sypha, she’s going to kill me if I don’t go back to work. Don’t leave, okay? There’s something I want to ask you. I have an idea about how we can, uh...let our parents know about us.”

***

“That’s an unusual request, particularly coming at this point in the semester,” Trevor’s advisor said, looking over her glasses at him, then back down to the sketchbook he’d nearly filled in only three days of sleepless scribbling. “But if it brings inspiration like this out of you...then yes, I’m willing to discuss how we can make it happen.”

***

The gallery filled more quickly than Trevor was expecting. Sypha was one of the first to arrive, of course; she took the glass of champagne out of his hand and drained it herself, setting it on a passing tray. “You’re not getting drunk tonight, Trevor Belmont,” she said.

“If I still _am_ a Belmont by the end of this,” he said, wiping his palms against his thighs. “Shit. Is it too late to back out?”

“Yes,” she said. “Calm down. I saw some of the pieces when you were working on them and...they’re extraordinary, Trevor. Anyone who doesn’t recognize that isn’t worth your attention. Even if they are your parents.” She pursed her lips, then said, “ _Especially_ if they’re your parents.”

“I still can’t believe he agreed to do it,” Trevor said, reaching for another champagne flute, which Sypha sighed but let him take. He wasn’t going to get _drunk_. He just needed something to hang onto, since Adrian wasn’t currently an option.

“He loves you,” Sypha said matter-of-factly, which nearly made Trevor snap the fragile stem.

“He..I...” Trevor stuttered.

Sypha rolled her eyes and rescued the glass from him again. “Even if you’re both dumbasses who won’t actually say it, anyone with half an eye can tell.”

“I don’t want him to do it just for me,” Trevor mumbled, wondering if he’d remembered to put on deodorant; his armpits were starting to feel sticky now, the room too hot, too full of people...

“Oh for the love of ancient Mesopotamia,” Sypha said, and took him outside for a few minutes to breathe in huge gulps of fresh air.

“You both made the decision,” she said once Trevor had stopped feeling like he was about to pass out. “I know this because you had at least some of the conversations while you were supposed to be _working_. And I’m sure many more I wasn’t privy to.”

Adrian had shown reluctance at first, but not nearly as much as Trevor had expected. And once he’d gotten on board, nearly half the ideas were his. For the current gallery setup, anyway—Adrian had unsurprisingly strong opinions about lighting, and a keen interest in the technology they’d set up, which he’d insisted on bankrolling.

Trevor would’ve protested harder, but he was fucking broke, and he’d also been fully preoccupied with redesigning his entire senior show within a painfully shortened timeframe. He’d actually taken time off work, basically living in his studio—the one on campus, with an assortment of easels and no beds—and barely noticing that Adrian had quietly been showing up for weeks with food and strong-armed reminders to bathe.

“It’s good?” he asked Sypha, needing reassurance.

“Well, I’m part of the general public who hasn’t seen it yet,” she said, too practical to actually lie to him. “But I know it will be. Now get your ass back in there. Your boyfriend needs you.”

Trevor’s part was done: not to the level of perfection he wanted, that the subject matter _deserved_ , but he’d finished what he could in the time he had. As long as all the automated pulley systems worked the way they were supposed to, the only piece left was Adrian. Who could, without exaggeration, handle this entire thing with his eyes shut.

“Okay,” Trevor said, squeezing his own eyes closed for a few seconds and breathing deeply before squaring his shoulders. “I’m ready.”

The first curtain lifted in time with a light, deceptively simple trickle of notes, from a composer Trevor frankly couldn’t remember. Adrian had, like Trevor, already completed much of the planning for his final showcase. Unlike Trevor, he’d been able to keep large portions of his intact, since this entire idea had been sparked by him: Adrian, his piano, and the music coursing through his body and onto the pages of Trevor’s sketchbook, which were suddenly teeming with images he could hardly seem to control.

The crowd was gathering around the initial set of them now: the series of rough sketches that had so easily filled the pages that first night in Adrian’s bed.

“This was a fucking terrible idea,” Trevor said; Sypha caught him by his shirt collar before he could make it out the door.

“I don’t know why I’m your assigned babysitter for the night,” she said, looking like _she_ badly wanted to get drunk. “Do you really want Adrian to be here alone when this is all over?”

It was enough; Trevor stopped bitching, at least out loud.

He’d honestly expected people to get bored. An hour was a long stretch to spend with a single artist’s work, with a program that guided the audience from one installation to another, forcing them to linger over each line, each stroke of the paint, until Adrian’s music pulled them forward. Trevor had assumed at least part of the group would start peeling off, their attention drifting.

 _You have that much faith in my playing?_ Adrian had asked, lounging in bed with him on one of the rare nights that Trevor had given himself a break to recover, before his hands quite literally fell off from overwork. Adrian had kissed his knuckles, one by one, looking up at him through his thick lashes, until Trevor had decided fuck it, it wasn’t like he needed the damn things anyway.

The music shifted into something more intricate—Liszt, one of Adrian’s more complicated pieces, important to demonstrate his proficiency, he’d explained, as Trevor sat on the floor next to his piano bench, translating the fluid gestures to something that could be frozen in time, understood by those who didn’t know anything about music other than how it made them feel.

Here, he’d focused on making the details as lifelike as possible, filling a portion of the wall with a collage of inked snapshots: long-fingered hands in rapid movement; a high-arched foot lifting off a brass pedal; the curve where Adrian’s neck met his shoulder, his hair pushed to the side to leave it bare; teeth pressing into a plush lower lip; pale brows drawn down over eyes that were narrowed in concentration...

 _I’m squinting_ , Adrian had objected. _You can’t include that one, I look cross-eyed._

 _It’s not my fault you refuse to wear your fucking glasses when you’re learning new sheet music_ , Trevor had said, rescuing the drawing from him. Not that Adrian would ever do anything to Trevor’s work; he’d asked, quietly, if he could frame one. Not from the exhibition, not of himself. _Just something of yours_ , he’d said. _I’d like to have it here with me._

As Adrian moved through his repertoire, Trevor trailed after the group, feeling lumberingly out of place. They’d kept the guest list small, which unfortunately meant _elite_. Both their advisors, the respective heads of their departments, selected faculty, music and art critics who’d be reporting on the experience, family and friends...which was a limited category. There were faces Trevor recognized from the museum, and others he knew from his studies but hadn’t realized Adrian would be inviting. Job prospects, potentially, if all went well—and a sign of Adrian’s ability to pull in some significant, if unasked for, favors.

He did his best to not eavesdrop on their hushed murmurs as they engaged with his charcoal—some of his best pieces—then the watercolors that he’d ended up painting in Adrian’s apartment, needing the light that he couldn’t seem to capture properly in either reference photographs or his memory.

After the slightest of drips on Adrian’s polished hardwood floors, Trevor had been forced to put down a drop cloth. One of the resulting paintings had ultimately been done from memory after all; it’d felt private, somehow, something that he hadn’t even initially wanted to show to Adrian.

“Now this is a study in sunlight,” a woman whispered to the man next to her. “An interesting change from all that darkness.”

“Hmm,” the man responded, with a light cough, then a lowered voice. “There’s a sense of vitality.”

“Like a young Apollo,” the woman said.

“But you can’t miss the passion,” a third person butted in, a pen tucked neatly behind her ear. One of the critics, Trevor thought, his palms sweating again. “It’s present in all the pieces, but particularly here, in how he’s lit—and in the music they’ve chosen to accompany it. He’s fully clothed, yet it’s deeply intimate.”

“Apollo transformed through the eyes of Eros,” agreed the woman who seemed fixated on mythology, until someone else shushed her, wanting to hear the softening melody as Adrian transitioned to the next section.

The cloth method hadn’t been as easy or effective as it sounded; Trevor had still managed to liberally drip over—and slightly past—the area it covered, too used to thicker paints that didn’t fly as freely off the end of his brush. Adrian, who’d been intently focused on the piece he was practicing, had taken a second to notice the first spatter against his white shirt. When he’d turned to Trevor with an outraged tilt of his eyebrows, beginning to explain exactly how much this particular shirt had cost, he’d been shocked into silence by a splash of blue across his cheekbone.

The painting showed the aftermath. Adrian, bright hair fanning out around him, sprawled on his back on the paint-splattered cloth, surrounded by loose sheet music that’d been caught in his wake. His eyes were nearly crinkled shut, his mouth open wide in laughter—Trevor could hear it, almost, pouring out of his paint-streaked throat, flooding the room with joy.

As they progressed into the long bank of oil paintings—displays, this time, of Trevor’s technical skill—he slipped away from the crowd, giving Sypha a pleading look as a promise that he’d be back. She glared, shaking her head slightly, but he had no intention of abandoning Adrian. He needed a break for a few minutes; there were pieces coming up that he couldn’t bring himself to hear the reactions to in person. 

He took a walk around the building, wondering how Adrian could do it—although, veiled behind the final set of curtains, he didn’t have to face the milling audience as he played. They’d talked through all the options and had agreed, for different reasons, that he’d be a distraction if he was too visible too soon.

 _You’re the artist_ , Adrian had pointed out. _If they’re looking at anything other than your work, it should be you._

But why would anyone bother with Trevor’s art—or with him—when the subject himself was within arm’s reach?

He slipped back inside the building, his feet treading quietly in time with the final notes of the baladǎ—part of the additions Adrian had made to his program. The group had nearly completed the full circuit of the room; Trevor made his way back to them, slowly, stopping to look at a few of his own pieces. It was different seeing them like this, professionally framed and mounted, with his name and brief descriptions etched into each silver placard.

Trevor Belmont. Weeping Violin. Charcoal on paper.

It was a good one, Trevor thought; he’d heard the sharp gasps when this image was revealed. Adrian’s bare form was curved away from the viewer, towards the shattered panes of the windows behind him. Strength mixed with fragility: Trevor had spent hours shading each taut line of Adrian’s muscles, showing the tension in his calves and shoulders, the agonized twist of his waist, the supple movement of an upraised arm drawing out a lament.

Adrian had remained quiet when he’d seen this one, but Trevor had let him watch the progress. It helped, with some, to have him close—to feel Adrian’s music infusing his work.

In another spot, they’d mounted a screen into the wall; on it, images flipped through a continual loop. It wasn’t an animation reel, not fully—Trevor didn’t have that type of expertise—but it brought life to a largely static space. Adrian, at his piano, caught in moonlight, focused intently on the keys, then turning to look over his shoulder, his hair rippling at the motion. The lines of his face were sharply defined by shadow-streaked light—displaying impatience, almost an arrogant sense of annoyance at being interrupted—but in the final frames, his lips softened into a smile.

The audience had now gathered at the far end of the room, where a curtain was lifting as Adrian, still shielded from view, began his final song—one that had, from its first notes, been Trevor’s favorite. Adrian had been vague about it, not offering the technical descriptions he did with the others, but it felt fuller than the rest, somehow. It began with the same melancholia from the baladǎ, rising into something gentler, more eager, yet still occasionally discordant, as though the composer was fighting with himself.

Trevor moved towards the music, ready to rejoin the murmuring cluster, but he stopped after only a few steps.

There was a lone figure standing in front of Trevor’s largest oil painting. Dark hair, a long black coat, pale hands folded behind him. He’d arrived late. But he was there.

He flicked a disinterested glance to the side when Trevor approached.

“So you’re the Belmont,” he said, his voice low and polished like his son’s, but darker.

“Dr. Ţepeş,” Trevor said in a carefully polite greeting, feeling the tension pull tighter between them.

The already sharp lines of the man’s face deepened, until it felt as though he was drawing the room’s shadows inward. “Call me Chancellor. Or Vlad, if you must. My wife was the doctor.”

Adrian's father cast his dark eyes back at the painting. It held two golden-haired figures, one bowed over the other in profound grief, his hair spilling over his bare shoulders but doing nothing to shield his expression—broken open with unspeakable sorrow and guilt—from the viewer’s cold judgment. The woman’s face, so like Adrian’s, was turned away from him, pale and drained of life, her body limp in his arms.

Trevor Belmont. Pietà in Reverse. Oil on canvas.

“It would have been better as a sculpture,” Trevor said, uneasily. “But my advisor told me I had shit for brains if I thought that a fucking cash-strapped place like this could—sorry, she, uh...pointed out that the university didn’t have the resources for that, not for a student project.”

 _You do realize it takes years to sculpt something at the level you’re envisioning_ , was what his advisor had actually said. _Even if we could obtain a block of marble at the necessary size within our budget limitations, you simply couldn’t do it, Trevor. Not if you want to graduate before you’re thirty_.

It was an exaggeration, but Trevor couldn’t blame his department for losing patience with him. As it was, this entire endeavor had required a mad scramble that had barely come together in time.

“Did you know she had a medical degree, in addition to her musical training?” Vlad asked, thankfully ignoring the rest of what Trevor had said, although his eyes had ticked back to him, briefly, narrowing at the insult to his institution.

“I did,” Trevor said, nodding his head and shoving his hands in his pockets. “Yeah.”

“She was an extraordinary woman,” Vlad said, quietly. He turned away from the canvas, towards where his son was playing—still behind the last curtain, an invisible figure steeping the building with his beauty. One of the gallery lights caught the elder Ţepeş at this angle: his cheeks looked hollowed out, suddenly, dark circles caving in under his eyes.

“You’ve seen my son in a way I haven’t managed in eleven years,” Vlad said. He gave Trevor a silent nod, the slightest bow of his head, before turning to leave, his coat sweeping behind him, along with the words: “I’m sure we’ll meet again, Belmont.” 

***

Sypha greeted Trevor with a questioning lift of her eyebrows; he shook his head to dismiss any concerns but huffed in repressed laughter when she pointed out the mythology-woman, who was now wiping away tears.

Still thinking about Apollo, probably.

Not that Trevor could blame her: he looked up at the final work, one he’d scrapped three times before finishing. It was a simple oil portrait. Adrian, from the waist up, softly waved blond hair and porcelain skin, against a solid black backdrop. His eyes met the viewers’, quietly and without any visible emotion. Lower, beneath the placid surface, his hand was set over his heart, his fingers digging into the seam of a chest that was split from shoulder to navel.

“He’s actually torn the canvas,” one of the museum curators whispered, stepping closer, as though drawn by the forbidden need to touch.

The tear was flapping apart at the shoulder, running raggedly to where Adrian’s fingers were rigid with tension, as though he was the one ripping himself open.

At the belly, seeping slowly upward, just touching the base of Adrian’s hand, the torn pieces were mended by gold: foil that caught the light, giving an appearance of movement.

There was a smaller screen set off to the side, playing a short video. A minute, at most, captured by a handheld camera that was wielded by someone attempting to keep the picture steady but occasionally forgetting to look through the viewfinder. Or someone who was, once again, refusing to wear his glasses.

The top of a dark head—hair unkempt, probably unwashed, with strands sticking out at odd angles—bobbed in and out of frame as the cameraman approached, angling a few degrees to the left to show the artist at work, meticulously pressing the foil into the canvas, holding the torn edges together.

The artist turned, with a surprised expression, when the camera drew near enough to catch his notice. Trevor felt strange seeing his own face ease into a wide smile, the scar along his cheek pulling at the movement. There was a ripple of sunlit waves at the edge of the lens as the view shifted slightly; graceful fingertips touched Trevor’s cheek, then trailed to his chin, tilting his face up. When a gold-flecked hand covered the lens, the video loop began again.

Trevor shifted uncomfortably on his feet, hoping no one turned to look at him. He hadn’t liked the idea of being a visible part of the exhibition and had resisted until Adrian had pointed out, quite reasonably, that it was far less revealing than any of the pieces _he_ had permitted himself to be a part of.

In a certain sense, that was true. But Trevor couldn’t help thinking of the woman’s words from earlier: while both he and Adrian were clothed in that video clip, he’d never felt so fucking exposed.

As the black drapes beyond the portrait fell—a soft cascade of fabric tumbling to the polished gallery floor—Adrian himself finally came into view. Dark pants, high leather belts, his shirtless torso coated in a sheen of sweat that glistened under the lights: evidence of a full hour of demanding work, with no intermission. He was playing against a bank of mirrors that were set in a semicircle around him: the glass of each fractured, to varying degrees, except for one that stood apart, and intact.

The music was softer now, all the broken tones washed away by trembling, hopeful notes that rose into almost unbearable sweetness until Adrian swept his hand down the keyboard in a shimmer of sound, then stood to his feet.

When he bowed, his long hair falling over his shoulders, his body—bound together from shoulder to waist by a bright seam of gold—angled unerringly towards where Trevor stood, the sudden silence in the room erupted into applause.

***

“They didn’t come,” Trevor said, touching the pads of his fingers to the gold body paint that was finally beginning to flake away from the most extraordinary—and, as he’d said all along, distracting—canvas in the building.

Adrian shrugged on a loose-fitting shirt and drew Trevor’s hand up to kiss his knuckles before releasing it. “You thought that might be the case. Does it bother you?”

“I don’t know,” Trevor said. The gallery was finally emptying; Sypha had left some time ago, while he and Adrian had spent hours being dragged from one exhausting conversation to another. Curators from two museums and an admissions officer from a competitive graduate program had handed him their cards; no guarantees, of course, they’d said, but they were interested in learning more.

Not a single Belmont had been in the room. Other than Trevor—the last of a family that had apparently severed its remaining connection with him.

“You don’t have to figure that out yet,” Adrian said. He tilted his face up to the pietà, the sharp angle of his jaw suddenly reminiscent of his father’s, and said, quietly, “Losing family is...complex. It takes time to deal with properly.”

“Does it bother you that your dad didn’t stay?”

“It surprises me that he was here at all,” Adrian replied. “The truth is, I hardly think of him that way anymore.”

“As your father?”

“As family,” Adrian said. He touched Trevor on the arm and drew them towards the entrance; the gallery was closing, lights shutting down behind them as they moved forward. “I’ve realized that it’s not always restricted to blood. Sometimes you discover it for yourself, in unexpected places.”

“Like a shitty coffee shop on the edge of campus at two in the fucking morning,” Trevor said, laughing when Adrian let out an exasperated sigh. Trevor was, if nothing else, exceptional at ruining moments.

“Hey,” he said once they were outdoors, Adrian effortlessly looping a scarf around his throat, then helping Trevor to tuck his far more bulky one into his coat. Although they were edging into summer now, the air still carried a chill at this late hour. “You never told me the name of that last composer.”

“It’s a relatively new composition,” Adrian said, with one last tug of the fabric, then a light brush of his fingers through Trevor’s hair, which Trevor had tried his best to tame for the event. “The title is, for now at least, Restoration. By Adrian Fahrenheit Ţepeş. It’s about how I found you.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to hear some of the music Adrian plays, here are three of the main ones:
> 
> [Baladǎ (piano)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkmK-22K4IM)  
> [Baladǎ (violin)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsD4tCtbs_s)  
> [Liszt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIxGUAnj46U)
> 
> And please talk to me about these two! I can't stop thinking about them and how unexpectedly perfectly they fit together. Now I'm off to read everything else in the tag. (And if anyone know what ship name to use to FIND things elsewhere, please let me know. I'm strugglin' here and I'd love to see more pretty art.)


End file.
